


notes

by g_e_r_a_r_d



Category: My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, Twenty One Pilots, random emo bands
Genre: & THANKS FOR COMMENTING IT MAKES MY DAY, Abusive Parents, Anxiety, Bullying, Depression, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, Gay Josh, Gay Tyler, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Josh is nice, M/M, No Sex, No Smut, Physical Abuse, SIKE I LIED, Sad Tyler, Self Harm, Shy Tyler, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, THERE IS SOME VERY MINOR SMUTTISH / HINTING AT SEX SHIT IN CHAPTER 24, Tyler is depressed, Verbal Abuse, also some, i love it when people are gay, like really, lol i cant tag, lots o' romance, lots of triggers, messed, nice josh, omg i love you guys so much, once again I LOVE YALL, oops tylers dad just got evil, pure romance, romance takes a while to appear, tyler is bullied, tyler is really messed up, tylers dad is abusive, up - Freeform, very slow burn, youre literally the reason i am alive right now ♡
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-09 22:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 50,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11113761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/g_e_r_a_r_d/pseuds/g_e_r_a_r_d
Summary: KIND OF ON HIATUS, PLEASE BARE WITH ME ILY ALL! every time tyler struggles to find purpose, he tries to find reasons to stay alive. one day, that reason is josh – josh, the weirdly beautiful kid in his english class.tyler just hasn’t realized it yet.this is a HIGHSCHOOL AU, with lots of fluff & stuff!warning: suicidal thoughts, self harm, abuse, bullying, and many other triggers are used in this book. please be safe! x





	1. Chapter 1

_“Dun… Joshua?”_

_“Yeah,” the boy said, fiddling with the straps on his backpack. “I’m not new, I just transferred classes.”_

_The teacher smiled warmly at him. “Of course – oh,_ here _it is,” she said, taking a paper from her desk and flipping up her glasses to read it. “You were recommended for a more advanced class by your other English teacher?” she questioned._

_“Yep,” he said, barely lifting his eyes from the ground. Only when she placed a hand on his shoulder did he look up._

_“I think you’ll like it here,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes as she put the paper back on her desk. “Why don’t you take a seat next to Tyler?_ Tyler, raise your hand, please.”

 

* * *

 

 

Tyler looks up from the worksheet on his desk when he hears his name. The teacher has her hand on the shoulder of some kid he’s seen in the halls before. He quickly raises his hand and places it back down on the table before anyone can see him. He’s sure that if they see him, they’ll find some way to ridicule him.

The boy makes his way over to Tyler. Tyler, who’s enjoyed sitting alone at the two-person table, flinches away instinctively when the boy slams his stuff on the table, pulling out the chair and falling into it like a sack of potatoes. Tyler tries to ignore him, hoping that he’s not going to start harassing him.

Tyler squeezes his eyes shut and tries to imagine his list, which he lives by. Last night he looked out the window for a good half hour before he wrote down: _october 1 – Sunsets._ He was absolutely sure that Hell didn’t have sunsets. Every time that he sees a sunset, he’s captivated by its beauty – it’s another thing to hold onto.

He has an entire worn-out notebook full of those little dates, front and back on each page, lined up in neat little rows. Almost three hundred of them. Nearly a year ago, he started the somewhat tiring yet silly practice of writing down one thing he loved every day – one more thing to stay alive for. Once he wrote down _red bull,_ another time it was _skinny jeans,_ they were tacky little things that no one else would find purpose in. But every time he opened that book and read the pages, he was overcome with a sudden feeling of… _peace._

Sometimes he cried because he still wanted to do _it_ even though he was surrounded by things that he loved – wanting to do _it_ was selfish, he knew – he _knew_ it was selfish, he knew it was _horrible,_ but he still wanted to do it sometimes. Sometimes, it was impossible to chase away the feelings with his book.

But he still tried to fight through it.

“Hey, are you okay?” the boy next to him asks, and Tyler’s jolted from his thoughts. He looks right up into wide, warm brown eyes, and he’s struck by the overwhelming feeling of _happiness_ that he feels when he opens his journal. Almost euphoric compared to his normal feelings.

 _No, no, no!!_ Tyler quickly looks away, looking back down at the paper. _He doesn’t want to be your friend, he probably thinks you’re weird, he’s going to call you names and leave you horrible notes in your locker, don’t look in his eyes, just ignore him._

Tyler ignores him.

The boy beside him grumbles but soon gets to work on the worksheet. _Look, he already hates you. He doesn’t want to talk to you, you probably had that bitchy, whiny, depressed look on your face and he didn’t want to see it._ Tyler almost holds his hands up to his ears to block out the incessant whispering from inside of his head, but he knows someone in his class will notice, and there’d be twice as many notes as usual on his locker.

 _His locker,_ he’s _dreading_ the end of class. At the end of the day, when he goes and gets his backpack, there’s always a handful of hateful notes taped to the front of his locker. He used to receive them inside of his locker, but eventually he learned to tape a piece of paper against the vents so that no one could slide them inside. Now, people shamelessly tape spiteful little things on the unforgiving metal, where he’s been shoved into and slammed against too many times to count.

Sometimes he skips going to his locker altogether and just accepts the bad grades that come with the lack of homework. The little voices in his head love to chime in – _you’re so much of a failure, the lack of homework isn’t going to affect you at all._ The voices _love_ to make him feel worse about himself. Every time he reads the notes, his head finds some way to justify them.

Today is one of the days that he opts out of going to his locker. Instead, he walks right by it – when he notices that _it’s completely clean,_ there aren’t wads of gum stuck in the handle and there aren’t pieces of trash with degrading remarks scrawled on them. He stops dead in the hallway to stare at it, but someone elbows him in the side – _purposefully –_ and he falls to the floor in a heap.

 _Get up Tyler, everyone can see you, they’re going to laugh, they’re going to hurt you, they’re going to step on you because you don’t matter,_ the voice taunts in his head. And it’s right, because a shoe narrowly misses Tyler’s head before he can scramble to his feet. He nearly runs out of the school and the rest of the way home.

_No notes._

_It can’t be a mistake,_ he thinks, his heart racing – _someone must have taken them off for me._

It’s almost too good to believe, but he writes that down in his journal anyways.

> **– the person who took the notes off my locker.**


	2. october 3, part i

Tyler pulls on his oversize black hoodie while he looks out the window. He definitely thinks that sunsets are much more beautiful than sunrises.

 _More beautiful than you, Tyler,_ says the voice in his head, and he shuts it out because he knows it’s trying to bait him. Sometimes, right before he goes to sleep – or at times like now – he’s in a pretty good mood, overall, and if he can keep it up, the voices will stay away for the whole day; or maybe he won’t have nightmares. He can be _normal for a whole day._

He guiltily pushes the sleeves of the hoodie down his arms and avoids looking at his wrists. He’s already showing enough skin as it is – his ripped jeans showcase his perpetually bruised knees. (Tyler doesn’t know why, but his knees always seem to be bruised.)

 _No one asked to see your ugly-ass knees, Tyler,_ the voice snarls, and Tyler responds by plugging his earbuds into his phone and blasting his music as loud as he dares to. He’ll never hear the voice over the music. Music’s one of the only things that he finds pleasure in, and it helps fill the long periods of time where he walks alone from home to school, and back. With nothing, not even his teachers to distract him, he often has… _those thoughts…_ while walking.

Tyler lets his mind focus on the song lyrics as he slowly walks to school. He doesn’t want to get there early – he has no friends to sit with in the cafeteria and no group to stand with outside. Instead, he arrives at the last possible moment and walks by his locker right when the first bell rings.

_Shit, he still has to get out that paper for art._

He turns around in the stream of people, trying to push his way through without touching anyone. He accidentally makes contact with a jock, who grabs his shoulders and slams him against the wall. Tyler shrinks back in fear, but the boy only yells the word _fag_ at him and releases him. With shaking hands, he starts unlocking his locker, ignoring the freshly taped notes. It takes four tries to get the combination lock to open. By the time he retrieves the paper for his art assignment, the start of class is a minute away.

He knows he’s going to be late, so he doesn’t even try to hurry his way to class. Instead, he wanders aimlessly down the halls, purposefully spending as much time as he can before he gets to the class. He hasn’t even considered the consequences until the point where he knocks on the door.

 _Shit, shit, shit, they’re staring at me, they’re all going to stare at me now, they’re going to_ stare _at me and they’re going to laugh, I don’t even have a pass, they’re all going to fucking_ stare _at me and they’re going to laugh._

He catches his bitten-down fingernail in his mouth and wonders why no one is coming to the door. _Shit! It’s that digital art segment!_ Of _course –_ he forgot – it’s in the media center, which is all the way across campus. If he runs, maybe he’ll get there at a time where Mr. Way will understand that he went to the wrong classroom. _Mr. Way understands me,_ Tyler thinks, _remember all the times he’s kept the class from laughing at me?_

Tyler runs as fast as he can, clutching the papers to his chest. There’s a group of students milling around near the entrance of the media center, and he slows down when he’s within sight of them. _Thank fucking god, Mr. Way’s late!_

That doesn’t save him from the ridicule of his peers. He hears them laughing at him, _it’s so obvious that they’re laughing at him. They’re not pointing or anything, but it’s so obvious that they’re laughing at_ him, _this kind of evil, mocking laugh is only saved for when they’re ridiculing_ him. He’s late, he’s late and he’s made them look at him and they’re _laughing._

Tyler shrinks into the corner and clutches the papers harder. He stares at the ground so intensely… as if he can burn the tears right out of his eyes. If only he can get them to evaporate – he can look up again – he _needs to not cry – if he cries, they’re going to laugh at him more, and he’s going to try to do_ it _again…_

“Thanks for waiting!” he hears Mr. Way’s cheerful voice ringing out. Mr. Way is the least teacher-like teacher in the entire school – he has bleached-out hair that he keeps tucked in beanies, and his wardrobe ranges from t-shirts and skinny jeans to full-out black suits, with red ties. He’s Tyler’s favorite teacher, because he _understands_ Tyler on a level that no one else seems to.

Mr. Way finishes unlocking the media center door and holds it open, smiling at Tyler as he follows the line of students into the room. Tyler finds a seat all the way in the corner of the room, where no one else is sitting. They are all sitting in large clumps, separated out by the popular kids, the drama kids, and even the weird kids no one liked. But even the weird kids have each other.

 _You have no-one, Tyler,_ the voice says wickedly. Tyler squeezes his eyes shut and tries to ignore it as Mr. Way goes around the room, passing back the portraits that they’d done before this project. The assignment was to draw not a portrait of yourself, but of your inner feelings. Tyler’s was, by far, the most personal piece he’d done all year – a dark charcoal work, a dark face with blurry, undefined features, brandishing blackened, twisted hands wrapped around its neck. It is the image of Tyler’s voices, how he personifies them in a piece of art. Mr. Way compliments him on the “honest work of art” as he passes it back to Tyler.

Tyler wedges it between the papers he brought with him. He doesn’t have his backpack, and he doesn’t want to look at the art, so he tries to ignore it as Mr. Way instructs them to log on to the computers and go to a website to download the digital software. While he waits for the software to download on the slow school internet, he alternates between chewing on his nearly nonexistent nails, picking at the ripped holes in his black jeans, and snapping at the rubber band on his wrist. He feels oddly nervous, like something’s going to happen and he’s going to have absolutely no control over it.

Well, he supposes that happens every day.

The kids in the class have learned to ignore the snapping of his rubber band, which he keeps on his wrist for when he feels like this. There’s a strange feeling in his stomach, and only the stinging pain can chase it away.

He hears the media center door and he turns to see the same kid from English class; the one with the brown eyes that made Tyler feel happy. He shrinks away, hoping that the kid doesn’t see him and think he’s weird. The boy is holding a pink late slip from the office, and his clothes are dusted with raindrops. It must’ve finally started raining outside.

“Josh! So you didn’t abandon your art teacher,” Mr. Way says, calling him from across the arm. ‘Josh’ shakes his head, smiling sheepishly.

“Nope, my English teacher wanted to put me in a better class… it messed up my schedule a bit.”

Mr. Way nods. “Well, have a seat and ask the person next to you for instructions.”

Josh runs a hand through his unruly hair, the dyed red curls falling against his fingers. He walks over to Tyler, pulling out the chair next to him.

 _No! No! Go away! Move, Tyler, or he’s just going to make fun of you, that’s the only reason he’s here,_ the voice calls desperately. It _loves_ having control over every aspect of his life. Tyler digs his short fingernails into his palms. _No,_ he thinks back, silencing the voice.

The kid had been nice enough in English, right? Besides, Tyler is _so_ desperate for a friend. He probably can’t trust this guy, but they can at least be mutual friends if they shared classes.

 _No, no,_ and it’s actually his own thoughts when he thinks this. This guy might be acting nice, but it’s just going to be like everyone else. _Like that one guy who asked you out once,_ he thought. _He stood you up and took a video of you, still crying in the restaurant three hours after. Then everyone laughed at you._

Tyler blinks when Josh says “Hi.”

“Uh, hi,” he says in his ugly, creaky little voice. Tyler despises his voice, he barely talks because of it. It constantly sounds scared and sad – and he usually _is_ sad, but he doesn’t know why his voice has to sound sad, too.

“So, what are we supposed to be doing?” Josh asks, looking at Tyler’s computer. Tyler stares at the wall two inches to the right of Josh’s face instead of looking into his eyes when he answers, so quietly Josh might not hear, and maybe he’ll go away.

“Um. We’re downloading this… drawing software…” Tyler softly tells Josh the name of the software, trying to get Josh to stop talking to him. Josh is almost irresistibly charismatic, and Tyler just wants to _talk to him,_ his whole body is yearning for him to act _normally,_ but he forces himself to be quiet so that Josh will stop talking.

“Is this it?” Josh asks, the cursor over the first link in the Google search. He accidentally brushes arms with Tyler and Tyler shrinks back further into the wall. Josh doesn’t seem to notice.

“N…no, it’s the second one,” Tyler says, his voice almost a whisper. Josh nods and clicks the second one, and they fall into silence as he starts downloading it.

“Are you okay? Or are you just really quiet?” Josh asks, out of nowhere. Tyler stops breathing for a second. _He probably thinks I’m retarded or something, great._ He shrugs because he can’t say that he’s okay, because he’s not. But he can’t say that he _isn’t_ okay because then Josh will ask why.

“It’s okay, I’m not the most talkative person either,” Josh says, and Tyler doesn’t believe it for one bit. With his dyed hair, nose ring, and those enormous black gauges in his ears, there’s no way that he isn’t popular. Even if he’s only just popular among the misfits, he _has_ to be. He’s so friendly. And nice...

 

* * *

 

 

Josh hates walking to school, but when he got up this morning, his ride had canceled on him and he’d already missed the bus, so he had to walk. Of course, he doesn’t have _time_ to walk to school – he’s only halfway there when the first bell normally rings – and then, when he’s almost there and the campus looks completely empty, it starts to rain. He’s noticed it getting progressively more overcast since he left the house, but he doesn’t expect it to actually rain, so he’s completely unprepared for it.

He ends up getting pretty wet by the time he’s under the shelter of the school walkways; the ladies in the office glare disapprovingly at him as he tells them about why he’s late.

His new schedule says he has art _first_ on the odd days, so he goes to Mr. Way’s classroom first. _Farewell regular art class_ , he thinks. _And I was just starting to get comfortable with the people in all my classes. Gee, thanks, English teacher, for switching me up._

Part of him hates his previous English teacher for messing his entire schedule up, but another part of him thanks her. After all, he’s got that Tyler kid to think about – _and he certainly does think about him._ He wonders why Tyler sits alone in English class and why he doesn’t talk at all, instead, he keeps an indistinguishable expression on his face and does his work quietly.

 _Damn it!_ He forgot about the whole digital art segment, that’s why there’s no one in Mr. Way’s classroom. He runs to the media center as fast as he can, protecting his hair with his backpack. (He doesn’t want the freshly dyed hair to run onto his clothes when it gets wet – it’s happened before, and it sucks.)

Mr. Way doesn’t seem to mind that he’s late. Instead, he tells Josh to have a seat. Josh looks around quickly – he doesn’t recognize _anyone_ in here. It’s a class full of kids who are probably just taking it for an easy grade. That’s understandable, because Mr. Way is so laid back that you could literally turn in a scribble for your big project and he’d give you a 100% because he could see the artistic idea behind it.

 _Wait, it’s that boy, Tyler,_ Josh sees him in sitting alone, in the corner of the media center, where a few bookshelves slightly hide him from view. Josh wonders if that’s because he genuinely doesn’t want to be seen – and possibly bullied or teased – or if it’s because he’s like every other person when they use a computer – he doesn’t want anyone to see what he’s doing.

 _Oh well,_ Josh decides to sit next to him anyways. He wants to become friends with this guy, he wants to figure out why he’s so shy and reserved.

The small boy beside him is very quiet when Josh says “Hi.” So quiet, in fact, that Josh almost misses the hesitant “hi” he gets in return. _Well, good, he’s not going to ignore me,_ Josh decides.

“So, what are we supposed to be doing?” Josh asks, peering at the boy’s computer. It’s on some downloading screen, showing a program that is almost finished downloading to the computer. When Tyler finally looks up at him, Josh is met with enormous brown eyes framed by long, dark lashes. They hold a strange sort of sadness behind them. They’re looking at a spot slightly behind Josh, and Josh suddenly realizes that he thinks Tyler is kind of _adorable_.

His voice is so soft and inestimably _sad_ when he’s speaking to Josh, and Josh is so mesmerized by it that he almost doesn’t listen to what Tyler is saying.

“Is this it?” Josh asks, feeling really stupid because he wasn’t really listening to what Tyler was saying – he was listening to Tyler’s beautiful voice. He gets distracted when he accidentally brushes arms with Tyler and the other boy shrinks away, like physical touch hurts him.

“N…no, it’s the second one,” stutters Tyler, his voice now so quiet that Josh can barely hear it. It’s like he’s afraid to talk, like someone’s going to hurt him if he raises his voice. Josh feels so concerned, he can’t help but blurt, “Are you okay? Or are you just really quiet?”

Tyler’s big brown eyes widen, and he shrugs. Josh understands – he doesn’t have many friends here, and he isn’t very popular. However, the few times that Josh has seen Tyler in the halls, he’s never seen him with _any_ friends. Come to think of it, he never sees him at lunch either – he wonders if Tyler goes off campus and meets someone, or if he goes outside and sits alone. Josh feels bad when he imagines the sad image Tyler, sitting alone outside with absolutely no one to talk to, while people in the cafeteria eat and laugh, talking boisterously to one another.

“It’s okay, I’m not the most talkative person either,” he tells Tyler. “Hey, where do you sit at lunch?”

Tyler looks scared to answer him. “U-um… out-outside… I eat alone out there…” He immediately shuts up, as if Josh is going to make fun of him for sitting alone.

“It must be nice and quiet out there,” Josh speculates, smiling at Tyler. “Hey, um, can I come eat with  you today?

Tyler looks suspiciously at him. “Why do you want to come outside… and eat with _me?_ ”

Josh shrugs, not catching onto the suspicion. “I think you’re a cool guy,” he says. “Also, I have a friend that I think you’d get along with. She’s really cool. Please? I’d like to be your friend.”

Tyler feels like he can’t really refuse the offer, or else Josh might get mad at him. So he softly says, “I guess.”

Josh smiles at him. “I’ll see you there.”

 

* * *

 

 

On the way to lunch, Josh realizes that he’s forgotten the food he brought to share with his friends. He waves them off and doubles back to his locker, where he’s got leftover Chinese takeout. Kind of a weird thing to bring to his friends, but Brendon is a weird guy, so he has an excuse.

The hall containing his locker is empty by the time he reaches it. He passes by that same locker – the one with all the notes on it. There are more on it than there were yesterday – the whole front of the locker is covered in pieces of garbage with horrible words like “faggot” and “retarded” written on them. Josh hates walking by this locker.

Yesterday, when his teacher sent him to the planning room to get some copies of a worksheet, he saw that the hall was empty, so he took that as an opportunity to rip all the notes away from the metal and, disgusted, throw them in the trash where they belonged.

Today, he plans on doing the same. He starts peeling them off, but a lot of them are stuck on with dirty gum and ridiculously strong tape, so it takes him longer than he intends. He starts stacking them in a pile by his feet as he removes them, one by one.

“Josh?” he hears his English teacher’s voice, and he stops dead, because he knows what it looks like.

It looks like he’s putting the notes on the locker. _Shit, shit, shit._

“What are you doing?” She makes her way down the hall towards him, and he’s frozen with his hands on the note. She stoops down to pick up the pile of notes, looking at them.

“ _You’re_ the one who’s doing this?” she says incredulously.

“No, no, no, I’m just taking them off, it’s the other people, they’re the ones doing it, I took them off yesterday and I’m taking them off again,” he says desperately, but she doesn’t look like she’s ready to believe him.

“You’re going down to the guidance office,” she snaps, balling the notes in her hands. “You can explain to _them_ why you’re going around leaving these notes on this locker. I don’t want to hear it.”

_Shit._

First, she messed up his schedule. Now, she’s going to mess up his life.

_This is what you get for trying to be nice._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this book is being received way better than i thought it would be??? thanks for reading it, guys!!


	3. Chapter 3

**october 3, part ii**

**warning: suicidal thoughts, self harm**

 

* * *

 

 

Tyler’s been waiting for what seems like hours. He knows lunch is only about halfway done, but every minute that Josh hasn’t showed up has dragged on forever. The uneasy feeling in his stomach is growing, and he sits against the same tree he always sits against, his knees pulled up to his chest. He pulls the rubber band on his wrist back, letting it snap into his flesh with a vicious sting.

 _Face it, he’s probably in there laughing with his friends about that stupid loner kid sitting outside while it fucking rains,_ and it _is_ raining, barely sprinkling, but it is enough to send the small other group of people straight back into the cafeteria. He is completely alone out here, and it’s the same as that popular gay guy who’d asked him out and stood him up. Just as before, he can’t bring himself to stand up and move.

The snapping of the rubber band becomes more regular, he does it over and over and over again as the feeling in his stomach becomes so harsh he’s almost crying. It’s a horrible feeling, it feels as though he has been stabbed by a knife and he’s slowly dying. Now he _is_ crying, and he can’t force himself to stop. He is sobbing and it is raining and _surely_ someone is going to come out and laugh at him. They are going to see him crying like a little kid.

His tears mix in with the rain that is coming down harder. He pulls his hood over his head, retreating into the oversize worn fabric of the hoodie. It’s his favorite hoodie, it hides away his ugly body and almost reaches his knees when he stands. He even has hoodie paws when he wears it, but it just makes him look _stupid._ He always looks _stupid._ Everything about him is _stupid,_ so _stupid_ to believe that Josh would actually come out to eat with him, that Josh has a friend who wants to meet him.

He sees the door of the cafeteria opening and he sits up in surprise. Maybe it’s Josh! Maybe Josh only _forgot_ about him – after all, he’s a rather forgettable person, maybe Josh actually cares about him! But it’s only one of the people who stands around in the cafeteria to make announcement. Tyler doesn’t know her name and he doesn’t know why she’d come out here. Maybe he has to go inside because it’s raining. Maybe she’s coming out to tell him his friend is waiting for him inside.

 _Probably not._ He stands up, stumbling over to her and pulling off his hoodie.

“Are you Tyler Joseph?” she asks. He nods. _Oh, shit, I’m in trouble or something. Somebody probably told some lie about me and now I’m in trouble._

“What are you doing out here in the rain?” she asks, looking sympathetically at his wet clothes.

“I like being alone out here,” he mumbles. It’s a lie, but he’s really good at lying about things like this. Her forehead wrinkles in concern.

“You’ve been asked to go to the guidance office,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. He shrinks away from her touch and follows her back into the cafeteria. “They called it over the intercom, but you must not have heard it over the rain. Someone said that you usually eat outside during lunch.”

Tyler nods and slowly walks his way to the guidance office. She’s being so nice to him; he probably isn’t in trouble. He has honestly no idea why he’d be called to the guidance office other than maybe something… his stomach drops again… something happened to someone in his family?

His stomach is doing somersaults now. He places his hand on the guidance office door handle, unwilling to go in. If he just ran away right now, he’ll never have to hear what was waiting for him before the door. If he runs now, he’ll never hear it. _God,_ he wishes he can just run away from everything in his life and leave everyone behind. Run to a place where people are nice to him and he doesn’t feel so _stupid._

The door opens and he nearly falls over, stumbling away from it.

“Oh, sorry,” says the person leaving. They probably didn’t see that the person they smacked the door into was Tyler. If they had, they’d have laughed at him and pushed him onto the ground. _That’s it, I have to go in,_ he decides, and he slips in before the door closes. A stern-looking lady sits behind the secretary desk, and Tyler uses his hoodie to wipe away his face, which still has either rain or tears on it. He stares at his shoes as she directs him to the second door on his right.

He walks to the door, again hesitant to open it. He knocks very quietly and it opens quickly. He looks inside and is horrified to see not only Josh, but the school’s vice principal and the counselor sitting at a large conference table. In the center of the conference table is a pile of garbage. _Idiot. Retard. Faggot._  His eyes widen and he starts to back away, but the guidance counselor, who opened the door, beckons him back in. “You’re not in trouble, I promise,” she says, getting him to sit in the chair that’s across from Josh. The vice principal sits next Josh and the counselor takes her spot next to Tyler.

“Tyler, have there been notes on your locker lately?” The vice principal gets right to it, looking rather angry. He receives a glare from the counselor when she sees Tyler shrinking into his hoodie in fear. Her voice is softer when she repeats the question to him, looking worried.

“Y…yeah…” he mutters, not meeting any of their eyes. He’s picking at the ever-increasing hole in the knee of his jeans, tugging at the threads and pulling their elastic out. It’s like little pieces of his world are falling away one by one, being mangled by a giant hand and thrown to the hard, unforgiving floor. The counselor and vice principal exchange glances and the counselor leans toward him.

“It’s not your fault, Tyler. You’re not in trouble and you haven’t done anything to be in trouble, okay? We just want to talk about the notes. Can you do that?”

He doesn’t want to talk about the notes. He doesn’t want to look into the overly-nice counselor’s eyes and he doesn’t want to have to find out why Josh is in here. He wants to pull his hood over his head and pull a blanket over his body and snap his rubber bands and hide from the world. He wants to sit in the bathtub and stare at the medicine cabinet and stare at the faucet and stare, with that overwhelming feeling in his chest, his heart hammering and tears welling in his eyes, he wants to stare at his razor and his fingers _itch_ for those familiar blades.

He tugs on the sleeves of his hoodie and looks back at the counselor, pulling himself out of his own thoughts. She gives him a sad smile. “Do you not want them around?” she asks, referring to the other two men in the room. Tyler nods quickly, and the vice principal grudgingly stands up. Josh follows him out of the room, looking scared and confused. _I don’t want Josh to see me crying…_

_The world is falling down around him… he doesn’t want to tell this to anyone… it’s falling down… what has he gotten himself into?_

“So, what’s going on here at school?” the counselor starts, and Tyler already knows that she’s taking notes, ready to tell his parents how fucked up he is inside the _minute_ he steps out of this room. His parents already know but they’ll be so _disappointed_ in him for it.

“Nothing,” he says quickly, going back to picking at the hole in his jeans. _Tyler, be more convincing!_ he screams at himself.

“Hmmm… Tyler, I don’t think that’s true,” she says, leaning closer to him. “Let’s talk about the notes on your locker, Tyler,” she starts. “Don’t tell me they weren’t there, okay? Tyler, we both know that you had rude notes on your locker.”

“Stop that,” Tyler says.

“Stop what, Tyler?”

“Stop that… stop saying my name so much… it’s weird.”

The counselor nods but then catches him in the act. “Tyler, changing the subject isn’t going to help you, okay? We need to talk this out together. We need to talk about the notes, okay?”

Tyler can’t take his eyes off of the floor when he says, “They’ve always been there, ever since freshman year.”

“Freshman year? That’s three years, Tyler. Why have you never said anything?”

He stares so hard that he feels the tears coming again. He _itches_ to touch the rubber band but he knows that it won’t help him here in front of this judgmental woman.

“B…because… they’re t…true…” he whispers, and he feels a tear hit his knee as he sits in this stupid conference room chair and cries like a stupid child. He’s so _stupid_ to tell her all of this, to admit to knowing about the notes, to break down in front of her. His family is going to be _so disappointed in him._

“Tyler, that’s not true and you know it. You are a very smart young man. I know it. You’ve been on the A/B Honor Roll for the last two years. Those other things that those notes call you… they’re not true, okay? The person who leaves those notes doesn’t know anything about you.”

“B…but they are t-true,” he says, choking on a sob mid-sentence. “Everyone says they are. They all l-laugh at… at me…”

“Tyler,” she says, stopping him there. “Your teachers all love you. I’ve never heard anything bad about you. You’ve never gotten in trouble and your grades are excellent. None of those notes are true at all.”

Tyler stops arguing with her because even though he doesn’t believe her, the more she talks, the stupider he feels. He’s so _stupid,_ she’s telling him that he feels like this for no reason. Even worse, she’s telling him that he _has_ no reason to feel like this.

He’s so close to just standing up and walking away.

“Tyler, Tyler, stay with me,” she says as he’s spacing out. “We’ve found who’s putting the notes on your locker. We’ve found out who’s doing it and it’s not going to happen again.”

He looks right up at her. “I thought lots of people were doing it,” he says.

She blinks. “Well, we found someone who looked like they were putting a lot of the notes on your locker.”

 _No, no,_ he _doesn’t_ want to know who does it but at the same time he _wants_ to know with all of his heart. He looks up, tears drying on his face, expectantly waiting for her to reveal the secret culprit behind the notes on his locker.

“Tyler… do you know Joshua Dun?”

Tyler’s heart stops. _Josh_ was the one who wanted to be his friend. _Josh_ was the one who invited him to lunch. _Josh_ sat next to him in class and talked to him.

“He said he wanted to be my _friend,_ ” Tyler wails, the tears starting back up before he can even blink. “He wanted to sit with me at lunch. He wanted to _talk_ to me. He wanted to introduce me to someone he knew.”

The counselor doesn’t know how to respond to this. Instead, she puts a comforting hand on Tyler’s shoulder. “Do you want him to come in?”

“ _No,”_ Tyler shrieks, standing up and running towards the door before she could stop him. He’s running from the room, and out into the office where Josh and the vice principal are sitting in  silence. He’s running through the door and he’s outside, running through the parking lot and _running_ back home. Away from school, away from the counselor, and away from _Josh,_ who lied to him about wanting to be his friend.

_Away…_

No one’s home when he gets there, and he left his keys in his locker – _the locker where Josh stuck all those horrible notes –_ so he uses the spare one hidden under the stylish fake rock near the doorstep. He runs all the way to the bathroom, stumbling sightlessly through the dark house, trying to find the light switch for his bathroom. He flicks it on and the lights blind him. He lurches toward the medicine cabinet, swiping his hands across the shelf until he finds the little packet of extra blades.

He staggers over to the sink, pushing up his sleeves and taking out one of the blades, his hands shaking.

  _I’m so disgusting…_

The world is _falling,_ falling down around him and he _can’t breathe._

_One. Two. Three. Four. Five…_

Blood trickles down into the sink. He takes in the sight of his wrists, pale from the lack of sunlight, becoming stained red, from the blade in his own hands. _From his own blood._ Cuts that are deep enough to root him to this ground, to release him from his pain, harsh enough to hurt in a good way.

 _Not deep enough to kill himself,_ because he’s scared, he’s too scared to leave the sunsets and the skinny jeans and the Red Bull and his senile grandfather _who loves him unconditionally_ and Mr. Way’s art class and Taco Bell and the music he listens to and all of the other things in his life that he _loves so much_.

 _You’re such a coward,_ the voice inside of him snarls. _Too sentimental to end it all. You could end it all now. You could. You’re the one in control of that blade, Tyler._

 _I’M NOT!_ he wants to scream, _YOU ARE!_ and he _throws_ the blade as far as he can, watching it as it lands in the bathtub, leaving a red streak as it skitters down the clean white surface. His hands are so _bloody._

He sways on his feet and falls to his knees. He shuffles over to the toilet on his bruised knees, bile rising up his throat as he catches sight of the ruined skin on his wrists and the scars going up and down his arms.

He throws up, blood dripping into the toilet bowl as he cries and vomits simultaneously.

The thoughts from earlier resurface in his brain as his breakfast makes a reappearance.

_I’m so disgusting…_

_The world is falling, falling down around me and I can’t breathe._

 

* * *

 

 

Hours later, Tyler lays in bed, his wrists wrapped in gauze he keeps stashed in his underwear drawer, and his body wrapped in a blanket. His hands have been rubbed raw from scrubbing all of the blood out of the bathroom before his family came back home. He’d refused dinner earlier, keeping himself locked in his room.

His hands shake as he uncaps his pen and opens the notebook. It takes him so long to think of something to write. He wishes, he wishes _so hard_ that he could write _Josh,_ but he can’t, because _Josh was the one who put those notes on his locker._

He thinks of all the beautiful things he’s seen today. The beautiful flowers outside of his house, the birds, the sky, the clouds, the _rain,_ the rain he’ll leave behind when he dies.

He takes a shuddering breath. A tear hits the paper of the notebook, leaving behind a small stain, flowing over the ink of the last week’s entries. The ink flows around the teardrop.

> **_– the rain._ **


	4. october 3, part iii / october 4, part i

**october 3, part iii**

Josh replays those moments over and over in his head. He blinks and he sees the notes on that lonely locker – Tyler’s, apparently. He sees his English teacher walking down the hall towards him, that horrified look on her face. He sees Tyler’s _broken_ expression, his huge doe eyes screwed up with tears as he tore out of the conference room and out into the world.

He blinks and he just feels _hollow_ inside.

“Joshua, I want a full explanation, _now,_ ” the vice principal snaps. They are back in the conference room. It has been about an hour since Tyler went running from the school, and he wasn’t found anywhere on campus.

Josh rubs at his face, wishing they’d believe him. He wished they’d understand that he was really just trying to keep a random person – a stranger he didn’t even _know,_ a the owner of a completely unknown locker – from having a bad day. For god’s sake, he hadn’t even known that it was Tyler’s locker! All he knew was that the owner of the locker was obviously being bullied and it wasn’t right.

“I did it yesterday, too,” he says. “Taking the notes _off_ the locker. Mrs. Hayes told me to go to the planning room and grab some worksheets she’d just printed out. I went, but on the way there, I saw that locker – Tyler’s locker – and I saw all those notes. I didn’t even _know_ that it was his locker. I just knew that it wasn’t right for someone to be putting those notes on the locker. So I took them all off and threw them away.”

He takes another breath. “I went back to my locker because I forgot my lunch today. I’d brought takeout for my friends… I saw that the same locker was covered in notes again, so I went to go take them off again. But then Mrs. Everett came over, and it was really horrible because she thought I did it. I swear I didn’t do it. I was just taking them off.”

He feels himself getting angry and he tries to drown out the anger. “You know, shit like that happened to me in middle school when I came out, and I was fucking angry with the whole world. When I realized how mean the notes were on the locker, of _course_ I was going to take them off. I felt like _shit_ when I saw that kind of stuff on _my_ locker and on _my_ phone and anywhere around me.”

He knows he’s gone overboard with the cursing, and he hasn’t even meant to tell them that he’s gay, but he supposes that it kind of proves the point that he _isn’t_ the person leaving the “faggot” notes on Tyler’s locker. They look sort of scandalized from his choice of wording, but at least he’s got a point across.

“Hmmm…” The vice principal looks at the guidance counselor while stroking his beard. “We’re going to be investigating further into this. For now, you may go. We will be reviewing the security camera footage when the security company can get it to us, and we will punish the correct individuals.”

Josh feels… relieved.

“We’ll still be notifying the Joseph family, of course?” asks the counselor. The vice principal nods.

“We must report all cases of bullying,” he confirms. “Joshua, you may go. You will be under close watch. Please refrain from removing the notes from Tyler’s locker again. If you see someone put more notes on, come tell me. Understood?”

Josh nods mutely, and the vice principal escorts him from the room. “Get the secretary to write you a pass to your next class, please,” he instructs. Josh turns to the secretary, who’s already writing out the note. She hands it to him and Josh walks slowly back to his next class, wondering.

_Wondering. What have I done?_

 

* * *

 

 

**october 4, part i**

Josh is dropped off at school right before the bell rings. He runs all the way to the media center, to his art homeroom. He wonders why art’s even a homeroom class. Also, he wonders: if Tyler will be in class, if he’ll still be able to sit next to Tyler; he wonders _if Tyler will forgive him._

He steps into the media center with barely a second to spare. The bell rings just as the door closes. Mr. Way is already giving instructions on using the drawing software they downloaded to the computers yesterday. _Yesterday, but somehow, it felt as if it were a year ago…_ He moves over to the corner where Tyler is sitting. _Thank god he’s here_ , Josh thinks.

He sits hesitantly down next to Tyler.

“Go away,” Tyler says in his small, scared voice. God, he looks so _pitiful;_ when he’s wrapped up in his massive black hoodie, he looks so tiny and helpless. “You said you wanted to be my friend, and then you ended up being the one putting the notes on my locker. Go away.”

Josh hears the hurt in Tyler’s voice. “It wasn’t me, Tyler. I swear. I was just taking them off. Tyler, it wasn’t me,” he pleads, but he feels Tyler’s hand on his arm. It’s pushing him away. _Tyler’s pushing him away._ Josh complies, not wanting to bother the boy, and goes to move to the next closest seat – next to a popular girl who’s just here for an easy grade. She gives Josh a disgusted look, like, ‘Who are you, a lowly misfit, to be sitting next to me, a cool kid?’ and he pointedly ignores her for the rest of the period.

_He has to find a way to make Tyler understand that he didn’t do it._

He has to get to Tyler somehow…

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Mel,” Josh calls to the innocent-looking girl sitting across from him. Her light pink hair is in pigtails and she honestly looks like a doll. However, the way that she’s eating the slice of pizza from the cafeteria is _anything_ but doll-like. She stops butchering the pizza, putting it on the tray.

“’Sup, Dun?”

“You know that kid that I was talking about from my English class?”

“Yeah?” She takes another bite of the pizza, leaning closer to him. “You said I’d like him. So, where is he? Wait, scrap that, where the hell were _you_ during lunch yesterday?”

Josh sighs, briefly explaining the whole locker note catastrophe to her. “So, let me guess, you want me to go redeem you to him for you?”

“It’s less impressive when you put it that way, but yes,” he says.

“Why me?” she asks, finishing up the pizza as he talks.

“Well, you’re nonthreatening,” he says, and she rolls her eyes. “It’s true. He’s been bullied, Mel, he doesn’t trust anyone. You’re not a popular person, so he might trust you _a bit_. Also, you’re a lesbian, so it’s not like you’re trying to break his heart or anything. Honestly, you’re innocent and nice, so there’s no reason why you’d be fucking with him other than you genuinely want a friend.”

She smirks. “Was that a compliment?”

“Yes,” Josh says desperately. “Please go out and talk to him. He won’t say a word to me so I need someone to talk to him. Please, Mel?”

She sighs and rubs her hands together, displacing the stray pizza crumbs from her fingers. “Sure. You said he’s an interesting guy, after all.”

“Thank you so much, Mel,” he says, relieved.

“Don’t mention it, Dun.”


	5. october 4, part ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm going to stop posting the warnings - i've pretty much established that this story is going to be depressing and triggering, so i wouldn't advise reading it if you will get triggered by self harm or mentions of self harm. i'm sorry, but it's hard to keep track of all of the triggers :(
> 
> please be safe x

**october 4, part ii**

 

* * *

 

 

Tyler doesn’t eat lunch, so he is stuck, alone, with his thoughts for a whole hour while he sits outside. It’s really not a good idea for Tyler to be stuck, alone, in his head with his violent thoughts in the quiet breeze outside.

He sits on the cool ground, cradled by the tree that fits so perfectly around his body. If he closes his eyes and imagines, he imagines that someone is holding him in their arms. Not someone like his mother, but like the people at school that are dating each other. _None will ever date me,_ he thinks, leaning into the tree and pulling strings from his beat-up hoodie sleeves. These sleeves have been through a lot with him. They’ve wiped sweat from his face, blood from his wrists, and tears as he tries to hide his crying. They’ve smudged charcoal in art and received paint splatters so often that they’re almost their own painting. The ends are tattered from constant use and washing.

Like many of his other articles of clothing, the sleeves and hems of the hoodie serve as an output for his nervous energy. Tyler seeks comfort from slowly tearing his clothes apart, thread by thread, just like the voices are viciously doing to his violent mind.

_The world is falling, falling down around me and I can’t breathe._ He remembers the phrase from yesterday afternoon and thinks of his aching wrists, and his dry hands, painful from all of the cleaning. A pretty kind of pain, the kind that makes him smile in a horrible way while he fantasizes about doing it again. Tyler _loves_ these pretty pains; they chase away the voices, sometimes for _days,_ and he’s left alone with his own thoughts. His own thoughts aren’t much better, but at least he can control them.

He can’t control the voices past getting them to shut up and go away. It’s like that piece he did in art with the blurry face and the black-stained hands. Tyler replays those words in his head again. Blurry face. _Blurry face… Blurryface…_ He wonders how that blurryfaced creature’s hands would feel against his throat, maybe silhouettes of his own, maybe a piece of that thick rope in the garage. He wonders how it would feel to jump off the bed or jump out of the tree and just _jump_ and be free, be _free_ for just a second before it all ends.

He wonders if the feeling when he slices the metal into his skin compares to the final feeling of ending it all. The powerful ecstasy he feels mixed with the pretty pain. He wonders if he would feel the same _rooting_ to the ground if he were swinging from a rope.

He’s drawn from his thoughts when he hears his name being called. Terrified that it’s Josh, coming to beat him up, he cowers away in fear. It’s only a girl, though, one of those misfit girls. The one who wears weird dresses and has long hair dyed pink. Her face is so soft and beautiful, she looks completely incapable of harming another human. Tyler lets his guards down, just for a few minutes.

He figures he can’t get much more _hurt_ than he is inside now.

“You’re Tyler?” she asks. He nods, unwilling to talk.

“My friend told me about you,” she says, sitting down next to him. He wants to draw away from her and sit a litter further away, but he’s scared that she’ll get mad and go away. “He said you’re really nice. Can I sit here?”

He nods and relaxes a little. _She thinks he’s nice, and she wants to sit with him. Okay… who’s this friend?”_

“Hey, can I paint your nails?” she asks out of nowhere. Tyler makes a face and she laughs. “I won’t bite you, I promise. You just have really pretty hands,” and Tyler feels touched, even at the weird comment. No one has ever called any part of him pretty before, much less his hands. “Pianist hands,” she says, digging around in her bag and retrieving a bottle of black nail polish.

“Are they going to laugh at me if I have painted nails?” he asks very quietly as she shakes the small glass bottle of polish.

“Look, if I hear anyone making fun of a guy wearing nail polish, I’ll make sure to punch them. Give me your hand,” she says, and Tyler feels an overwhelming sense of appreciation for her. She _understands,_ she knows how the people at his school operate. Most of them ridicule anything ‘girly’ that the guys do, laughing at them and accusing them of being a fag. Of course, he _is_ gay, and he’s used to the name-calling, but he is still sensitive and hates the word.

“T…thanks…” he says. _No one’s ever promised to protect me from anything,_ he thinks. He winces away her fingers and from the cold feeling of the brush against his nails, but she has a deathgrip on his hand to keep him from ruining the polish.

“From now on, you’re going to be my friend, okay?” she says forcefully, but not so much that Tyler is threatened. Just a playful sort of way that makes him think she’s telling the truth. “Anyone who insults or hurts my friends is trash under my shoe.”

“But… that kid Josh told me he was going to be my friend, but then it turned out he was putting those notes on my locker. Are you doing that? Are you going to try to ruin my life, too?”

“Look,” she says, dipping the brush back into the bottle and moving from his ring finger to his little finger. “I know Josh, and he’s not a bad guy. The whole thing was a complete misunderstanding, okay? He didn’t do anything, he was trying to take the notes _off,_ he wasn’t putting them on.”

Tyler shakes his head. “They said so, the counselor said so, _Josh did it,_ you’re wrong.”

“Maybe they did say so, but he’s my friend, and I believe him,” she shrugs. “Give me your other hand and don’t touch anything with that one.”

Tyler gives her his other hand, feeling kind of gross because of his chewed-down nails, but she ignores them and paints what she can. “Why do you want to be my friend?” he asks.

“Jesus, is there an application and an interview process? You just looked lonely and I wanted to talk to you. Also, you have some pretty cool hoodies.”

Tyler laughs a little, his voice cracking like a million times when he does. He never laughs, and when he does, he sounds like a dying cow.

“I’m Melanie, by the way,” she says, closing the bottle of nail polish and stowing it back in her bag. “Your nails look _stunning.”_

And Tyler wonders if _maybe,_ just _maybe,_ this might _finally_ be a friend for him. _She hasn’t tried to hurt me, kiss me, videotape me, embarrass me, or make me feel bad. She painted my nails and told me she’d protect me…_ the feeling is so _promising_ that he decides he’s going to let her in, despite the whole Josh incident.

_If I’m nice enough, maybe she’ll like me and we’ll be friends,_ he thinks wildly.

“Tyler,” he says, holding out his hand. “Oh, you know that already.”

She looks at his hand and bursts into laughter. Hurt, he drops it.

“I’d shake, but I don’t want to ruin the polish,” she says, instead, she leans over and pats him on the head like he’s some sort of little kid. He doesn’t think that she’s being condescending, though. It’s more of a friendly gesture.

_Is this what it feels like?_

_Maybe,_ maybe, _maybe_ he can start to pick the pieces back up and fix them back together with black nail polish and strands of cotton-candy hair. _Maybe,_ he can breathe again.

“You’re such a cute kid,” she says, putting a hand in his hair. Tyler stills, freezing from her words and the touch of her hands in his hair. “Don’t worry, I’m a lesbian, I’m not creeping on you,” she tells him, starting to style his hair. “You’re just so pretty, I’m jealous.”

_Pretty? What’s there to be jealous about? Especially from a girl?_ He’s confused, but he allows her to mess with his hair until the bell signaling the end of lunch rings. Then she asks for his phone number, and they exchange contact information.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Tyler,” she says, standing and giving him a genuine-looking smile. Brushing her legs off with one hand, she holds out her other hand to him, and he catches it to help himself up. He likes the look of the black nail polish on his stubby little nails. He likes the look of someone smiling at him.

_He likes this._

 

* * *

 

Tyler arrives at home and smells the baking bread before he opens the door. It’s his mother’s day off, and she usually takes advantage of this day to cook big meals for the rest of the week. There’s a few loaves of bread in the oven, and he sees more dough on the counter. A large pot, presumably of soup, is cooking on the stovetop.

“Hey, Tyler,” his mother says, putting down a pair of kitchen mitts to greet him. She kisses the top of his head. “How was school?” She returns to the pot of soup, stirring it with a large spoon.

Tyler stares at his feet and places his backpack on the floor. “I made a friend,” he says, almost inaudibly. Tyler hears the spoon fall onto the counter – his mother must have dropped it in surprise. _It’s so sad that the fact that I have a friend can shock her so much,_ he thinks.

“You did? That’s great!” she says, recovering from her astonishment. “What’s their name?”

“Melanie,” he mumbles. “She came out and talked to me during lunch. She painted my nails.” He brandishes the polished nails at her.

“Honey, I’m so happy for you,” she says, trying to conceal the happy tears in her eyes. Tyler hasn’t had a friend since kindergarten, and even then, they barely counted as friends. In her eyes, he’s such a withdrawn, antisocial boy. She doesn’t understand why he can’t make more friends.

_Because they take advantage of me, bully me, and betray me,_ Tyler would explain to her, but she’s never asked.

The phone rings and she turns her attention to it. “Yes, hello?”

She squints and stares at Tyler, confused, as the person on the other end talks. “No, I wasn’t aware of anything like that happening,” she says. “Wait, when did you say it happened?”

She adjusts the phone, glaring into the soup as she starts stirring it again. “Yesterday?... He ran out?” Now she fixes her glare on Tyler’s back as he roots through the cabinet to find a snack. He _desperately_ wants to run away from her, because he knows exactly what she’s talking about on the phone. “How long has this been going on?”

A few seconds passes and she sighs, a slow, sad sigh; she turns off the pot of soup and walks over to the couch. “You don’t know.” Tyler watches as she pinches her nose. “Why, though? Who’s doing it?”

“No, he’s never said anything about it, _I don’t understand why he wouldn’t,_ ” she says frustrated. “You caught someone doing it?”

There’s a very long pause. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I need to talk to him about this.” And then she hangs up the phone, adjusting her body on the couch to look at Tyler. The tears in her eyes are horrible and sad now; she looks so angry and _horrible,_ Tyler just wants to grab the bag of chips and bolt like he did at school the other day.

“The school said you ran off campus yesterday,” and that’s when Tyler notices the little changes on her face that he’s never seen before – the little wrinkles forming around her mouth, and the dark bags under her eyes, the grey hairs coming from off her head. He stares at the ground again, fixing his gaze onto his shoes.

“Tyler, I’m not mad at _you,_ ” she says desperately. “Come here, Tyler. Come here next to me.”

He hangs his head as he sits on the couch next to her. And she _hugs him_ , hugs him harder than she’s ever hugged him before. Her grip is like a steel vice on his body and she whispers into his ear.

“ _Why didn’t you tell me about this?_ ” she says, loosening her grip but not letting go.

“I – I didn’t tell you, it wasn’t a big problem, it was all true so I didn’t want to complain,” he says desperately. He doesn’t want to make her mad, he just wants to run away from her and never come back.

“Oh, _Tyler,_ ” she says, her voice cracking, and Tyler knows he’s in for a long discussion with his parents.

His secret’s out now and he can’t do anything about it. He’s losing control.

_The world is falling, falling down around me and I can’t breathe._

 

* * *

 


	6. october 4 part iii / october 5 part i

**october 4 part iii**

* * *

 

Tyler hugs his pillow to his chest and cries into it. He can hear his parents yelling at each other, even when his bedroom door is shut tight and locked. Though their voices are muffled, he can tell that his mother is crying. And they are arguing about him.

His father – Chris – is calling him horrible things. He says Tyler is a disappointment; that all he ever wanted was a normal son who could play basketball and have girlfriends. He says Tyler is weak for not standing up to the bullies. He says it’s Tyler’s fault for being bait for them, anyways. If Tyler could just be more normal… it’s not that hard to be _normal –_ thank _god_ he has two other sons, because Tyler isn’t cutting it. His homosexual son with his feminine voice and his _painted nails_ just isn’t cutting it.

_No,_ Tyler’s mother, Kelly, is yelling back at Chris. It’s not Tyler’s fault for being like this, he was born this way. He can’t help that he’s different. _Chris, you need to stop that right now, he’s so fragile,_ and his father erupts like a volcano, swearing and yelling that he didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask for his son to be so _weak_ and feeble. He didn’t ask for this!

Tyler knows his father is drunk and angry but it doesn’t help with the horrible feeling in his stomach. His father keeps screaming that he wishes Tyler was dead. His father _hates_ him, his father is _sorry that he was born._

Well, Tyler is sorry he was born, too.

He wonders how his father would feel to find his body in the bathroom when he woke up to go to work. Unconscious – _dead –_ bleeding on the floor, drowned in the bathtub, never to wake up again. Would his father be happy? Would his father be _glad? At least_ he has two more sons to go through, perhaps one of them will turn out right _. Zach_ would never be so _weak_ as to stain the floor with his own blood. _Jay_ wouldn’t overdose on sleeping pills so that he would never have to wake up again.

Tyler feels his tears sliding down his nose. _Disappointment! Ungrateful! Weak! Homosexual! Feeble! Unwanted!_ The blurryfaced voice in his mind is chanting those words over and over again; they echo through his mind and he curls into a tighter ball.

He grabs his phone from the side table and his fingers hover over the only contact other than his parents. _Melanie…_

He adds a new conversation with her. **_Melanie?_**

A few seconds later, a reply appears. _Sup tyler?_

**_I dont want to bother you but… im feeling so bad inside right now…_ **

_Np. what’s wrong?_

**_have you ever hated somebody so bad you just want them to go away and never come back?_ **

_i mean, it depends who youre talking about…_

**_that’s what my dad is saying about me._ **

She doesn’t reply for a while and Tyler starts to lose hope. He _has_ to talk to someone about this, and now that he’s tried to, she probably just thinks he’s a _weirdo._ Tyler hopes he hasn’t scared her off.

_Tyler, that’s horrible,_ she texts back. _i don’t even know what to say about that. there must be something wrong with your father._

**_hes yelling at my mom and hes drunk._ **

Tyler knows his father is a violent drunk and that his mom’s always hated that about him. She constantly mutters about getting a divorce from him, but she doesn’t know if the family can afford that. The only thing that keeps them together, she says, is the children. Tyler thinks about it for a second before he adds another text:

**_i’m scared he might hurt me, he’s saying really bad things._ **

_keep your door locked,_ Melanie advises. _also, don’t listen to him, ok? whatever you do, don’t listen to him because hes drunk. HURTING YOURSELF IS NOT GOING TO HELP, even if you think it will.._

Tyler feels so much safer talking to her… _she really seems to care about him._

**_Ok… thanks Melanie…_ **

_anytime tyler, ok? please talk to me if you feel like you need to talk to someone._

Tyler puts his phone down and grabs his journal. And right below “ **the rain”** , he writes:

**\-- melanie**

 

* * *

 

**october 5, part i**

On Friday morning, Tyler finds himself walking into the media center late just so that he can find a seat as far as humanly possible away from Josh. Mr. Way turns a blind eye to his tardy. Instead, he busies himself setting up the projector so he can show the students some digital artwork.

Tyler stares at what Mr. Way is doing and Josh stares at Tyler, wondering how he can get Tyler to believe him. Of course Tyler will be friends with _Melanie,_ but the second that Josh tries to be nice to Tyler, Tyler looks like he’s about to start crying – well, more than usual, at least. _Why can’t he believe me?_

He remembers the conversation he had with Melanie last night. How they’d sat together at lunch, and Melanie polished the nails on his ‘ _beautiful’_ hands, and ran her hands through his ‘ _luscious’_ brown hair. If Josh knew better, he’d have thought she was trying to make him jealous. She told him about how insecure and helpless Tyler was, how he was scared of everyone – including his own family. When Josh demanded answers, she refused to reply, claiming that she had to return home.

 Josh keeps staring at Tyler. Tyler’s so… so… Josh struggles for a word that fits him. _Innocent,_ he thinks. _Something along the lines of that…_ Tyler hasn’t done anything to deserve the notes on his locker, the people tripping him in the hall; he shouldn’t have a reason to be so suspicious and distrustful of people. He doesn’t deserve how people treat him.  

Josh knows it’s creepy, but he just wishes that he could just give Tyler a hug. Art class drags by and he watches Tyler shiver against his oversize hoodie, pulling the fabric close to himself as he sits in the chair and watches Mr. Way use the art program. He’s clinging to it like it is some sort of life line. Josh notices some of the other kids in the class snickering at him and he desperately wishes he can do something for the boy.

The bell rings and everyone trickles out of the classroom, hefting their bags and stepping out into the rain. Josh hangs behind them, trying to catch Tyler’s eye. Tyler is pointedly ignoring him as he uses shaking hands to zip up his backpack. Josh puts a hand on Tyler’s shoulder. “Tyler…”

Tyler jumps away from him like Josh’s hand is poisonous. “Don’t touch me,” he cries, and he’s literally _crying,_ because Josh can see how glassy Tyler’s eyes are. Tyler hangs his head and starts speed walking out of the media center, away from Josh. As far away as possible.

 

* * *

 

Tyler is huddling under a small pavilion behind the cafeteria and watching the rain. He’s too cold to be wet right now, he feels as though if he becomes any colder he will shatter into a million pieces. He remembers – and tries to forget – the sight of Josh coming up to him and putting his searing warm hand on Tyler’s shoulder. He tries to forget how he could feel Josh’s warmth right through the hoodie.

“Tyler! Hey, Tyler!”

Tyler sits up at the sound of Melanie’s voice. She comes running over to him, sitting down on the pavement next to him. “I brought someone I think you’d like!”

Tyler looks up to see a short, slightly chubby man wearing a fedora. He looks just about as uncomfortable as Tyler probably does, but slightly happier.

“Tyler, Patrick. Patrick, Tyler. Hey, Tyler, are you okay?”

Tyler shakes his head. _He’s not okay and he can’t keep it from her._ Friends – that’s what friends do, right? They tell each other everything. He hugs his knees closer to his chest as she approaches him.

“Hey, I’m not going to hurt you,” she says, plopping down beside him. She wraps an arm around his shoulders and he feels how _warm_ it is, almost as warm as Josh’s hand. He leans into her. The other kid, Patrick clears his throat.

“Oh, yeah, Patrick,” she says. “Um, Patrick’s the most interesting quiet person that I know. I thought you’d like – oh, shit, here comes Pete.”

“Were you trying to steal my Tricky away from me?” shouts a kid as the cafeteria doors slam shut. He runs over and tackles Patrick. It looks like he’s wearing all of the eyeliner in the entire state of Ohio. The eyeliner matches his black clothing.

“Tyler, this is Pete,” Melanie says, sighing. “He’s a really annoying bag of dicks, so you should leave him alone. Unless, of course, you’re a total pervert.”

The cafeteria door opens again, and a man with an inordinately large forehead appears, talking to two girls with brightly colored hair. “He’s, like, the sexiest fucking teacher at this whole school,” and “he’s definitely fucking Frank Iero,” Tyler overhears. He’s suddenly very _nervous –_ why are all these people coming out here?

“Guys,” Melanie says exasperatedly. “Tyler doesn’t like crowds of strange people.”

“Well, then let’s make ourselves not strange to him, right?” says the boy with the forehead. Fivehead, more like it. “Those two are Hayley and Ashley, and I, the sexiest man you will ever meet, am Brendon.”

“If you want him to go away, call him Brandon,” whispers Melanie. The boy – Brandon – sits with the other group of people gathering around Tyler, who are all laughing and fighting with each other and, in Pete and Patrick’s case, sitting in each other’s’ laps.

_I can’t breathe I can’t breath I cant breathe i cant breathe i cant breathe…_ Tyler feels suffocated by the nice people, but he tries to ignore his inner feelings so that maybe, maybe he’ll make friends. _If they think I’m normal they’ll like me._

The door opens again, and a head of artificial red hair pokes out. “Hey, all you guys came out witho – oh.”

Tyler shrinks away at the sight of _Josh._ Josh and his curly red hair, Josh and his smiles that always wrinkle up the skin around his eyes. Josh with his perfect white teeth and the ever-changing gauges he keeps in his earlobes. Josh is so _attractive_ to Tyler, but he’s not _nice._ He put the notes on Tyler’s locker.

“Hey, Yoshua,” the red-haired girl yells from her perch behind the blue-haired girl. “Come over here and braid Ashley’s hair, I’m shit at it,” and Tyler shrinks further into Melanie, because he’s convinced that if Josh comes over and sees him hanging out with Josh’s friends, he’ll get mad. _Josh is someone to fear now, none of Josh’s friends are safe, nobody is safe,_ he thinks. _Not even my own dad._

“I, um,” Josh glances at Tyler, who is holding onto Melanie like she is some sort of life line. Josh has never felt so jealous of his friend before – why won’t Tyler hold _him_ and talk to _him_? They’ve hit it off real well in just a day – why won’t Tyler believe Josh when he says it _wasn’t him_?

_He can ignore me, but he’s not allowed to steal my friends,_ thinks Josh, so he plops down onto the ground and grabs Ashley’s bright blue hair. It’s put into a shitty braid, and Josh cringes at how knotted up it is. He has plenty of experience with braiding hair – he has a little sister – so he begins the painstaking task of braiding Ashley’s long hair, completely aware of the angry eyes looking at him.

Tyler, so tiny in his big hoodies that _swallow_ his small body. Tyler with his stick-up chocolate hair and matching eyes that take up his whole face, his pink lips that never smile. His bruised-up knees revealed by the huge holes in his skinny jeans. He’s just so _adorable._

And he hates Josh.

_Will he ever believe me?_

Josh shakes the thoughts about Tyler from his head, instead focusing on the blue hair he’s supposed to be braiding. However, his eyes are drawn to Melanie’s pink pigtails. She’s bobbing her head along to some music – music, he notices, that she’s sharing with Tyler via earbuds. _God,_ if she wasn’t openly gay, he’d think that they were dating. She’s cross-legged with her head on his shoulder, and Tyler has his knees drawn to his chest, wrapping his arms around the holy jeans. His hoodie sleeves are slightly pulled up from this position – is that a _bandage_ around his arm? Josh finds himself staring.

_It looks like a bandage… the texture is like a bandage… but it could just be a shirt under his hoodie…_ He ignores the thoughts that spring to his head.

Josh spends the rest of lunch braiding Ashley’s wild hair and then having an extensive conversation with Brendon about Mr. Way’s general attractiveness.

“Come _on,_ he’s hot, just admit it,” Brendon says. “He’s, like, so young to be a teacher.”

“Actually, I heard somewhere that Mr. Way was _forty,_ ” Hayley cuts in from her spot on Ashley’s lap, where Ashley is playing with her hair.

“No _fucking_ way,” Brendon says.

“Exactly, no fucking Mr. Way, since he’s old enough to be your dad,” Ashley says.

“But he looks _twenty,_ ” sputters Brendon, looking heartbroken. “This can’t be true, it can’t be true, he doesn’t _look_ forty.”

“Anyways, he’s already got eyes for Frank Iero,” Hayley reminds him. Brendon clutches his chest.

“My _heart,”_ he wails, falling over dramatically. His head lands in Josh’s lap. His demeanor changes quickly, and he smirks.

“Hey babe,” he says as Josh’s hands fall down to poke his face. He scoots over until he’s sitting in Josh’s lap.

“Ugh, stop flirting with me, you pervert,” Josh says, trying to push him off, but Brendon succeeds in toppling them over and in moments he’s straddling Josh’s waist.

“You know you love me,” he murmurs into Josh’s neck. Josh doesn’t feel that way about Brendon, and Brendon doesn’t either – Brendon does this shit to everyone – but Josh’s dick seems to understand the fact that a wildly attractive man, despite his large forehead, is climbing all over his body. Brendon smirks down at him. “Aw, is Joshie getting – ”

“Shut up,” Josh mutters, finally throwing Brendon off of him and frantically trying to think about his math teacher, a fat, balding man in his fifties, to dispel the half-boner. His math teacher is such a turn off.

He watches as Brendon wanders to the corner of the pavilion, where Patrick and Pete are sitting together, staring into the rain. It looks like a romantic moment, but Brendon, of course, is going to go fuck shit up.

_Brendon loves fucking shit up._

_You fuck shit up, too,_ a voice in Josh’s head reminds him. _Like how you fucked shit up with Tyler._

Josh sighs and waits for the bell signaling the end of lunch to ring.


	7. october 5, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is so cliche and shitty also i have the worst writers block and overall depression and im running out of pre-written chapters ahhhhhh

**october 5, part ii**

* * *

 

Tyler arrives home to see his father playing football with Zach on the lawn. Zach, the perfect child son, ideal for everything, including manly sports like football. He feels an awful sensation in his stomach as he passes by them. The middle school was closed because of some issues with the plumbing, so his father had come home early to keep an eye on his siblings. He never can remember a time that his father took off work to spend time with him. He can’t remember anything.

Tyler goes into the house and drags his backpack up to his room. Once the door is locked, he flings himself onto the bed and pushes up his hoodie sleeves. He has to change the gauze on his cuts. He blinks and behind his eyes, he can see the blood bubbling out of the freshly-scabbed lines, he can see the clean white bathroom smeared with blood, he can see the toilet containing a mix of his vomit and blood and tears. There is blood everywhere when he closes his eyes. And every time he is alone, in silence, he hears his father calling him those names again.

Tyler doesn’t want to be in silence. Instead, he quickly wraps new bandages onto his wrists and cranks the volume on his phone all the way up, even though it hurts his ears when he puts his earbuds in, _it’s better than the silence,_ when he can close his eyes and see his blood and hear his father calling his name over and over again.

He closes his eyes and is blissfully met with darkness.

He can deal with the pain of the loud earbuds – as long as he doesn’t have to hear his father.

 

* * *

 

Tyler can’t meet his parents’ eyes during dinner. He pushes his food around on the plate and listens to them talking with his siblings. The spaghetti smells delicious, but he feels like he’ll throw up if he tries to eat it. He feels their eyes on him as he sits there, quiet and honestly kind of scared. Every time he looks at the spaghetti meat, he can’t help but think of the toilet bowl filled with blood and vomit.

He glances at his siblings’ plates. They’re almost empty – if his parents will let him go without talking to him – if they’ll just leave him alone –

“Why aren’t you eating?” thunders his father. Jay, Zach, and Maddie abruptly stop their argument over what kind of ice cream is going to be for dessert. Tyler’s mother forces a smile.

“Maddie, Zach, Jay, why don’t you go serve yourself whatever kind of ice cream you want,” she suggests, still smiling. “And you can turn the TV on if you’d like. No fighting though, okay?”

Tyler’s stomach sinks even further than it was before, if that's even possible. It feels as though his heart’s going to explode out of his chest. He watches his siblings innocently file out of the room, closing the door behind them. “Tyler’s in trouble,” he hears Zach whisper exaggeratedly before the door shuts.

“Tyler, honey, we’re here for you,” she starts, still sounding so… nice. _We? What ‘we’? My father doesn’t want anything to do with me,_ Tyler thinks, directing his gaze to a painting he’s seen a million times in his life and acting as though it’s suddenly very interesting. “Tyler, please eat something.”

“ _No!”_

Tyler jumps out of his chair at his father’s outburst. He’s yelling, probably loud enough for the kids to hear, and _bang,_ like a gunshot, he slams his fist onto the table. “Sit the _fuck_ back down _. He’s so_ _ungrateful,”_ Tyler’s dad yells. “We’ve done everything right for him. He’s spoiled to death, he has a loving family, and he goes to a good school. We haven’t done _anything_ to bring this upon him. It’s his own goddamn fault if he has no friends or if the kids at school think he’s a faggot. It’s his goddamn choice.”

 _There’s so many things wrong with that statement,_ Tyler thinks, so briefly before he feels the tears springing to his eyes. His father’s voice is a threatening, angry growl in his ears. “He could’ve chosen to be normal, he could have friends, he could even have a goddamn girlfriend right now, but instead, he’s decided to live his life like this. Is it our fault he’s like this? No! He’s made all these decisions already, just let him starve to death if he wants! It’s none of our _fucking_ business if he’s getting bullied at school! That’s on him!”

His father is _banging_ his fists on the table, smacking them with anger, and Tyler sees his mother flinching away each time his fists come back down on the wood. She doesn’t look like she’s going to argue with him, though.

“You know what?” His father is talking again, but his voice is so _scarily_ calm. “Y’know what? If you want to keep making such fucking stupid decisions, get out of my fuckin’ house. Get the hell out. Get out and don’t come back until I pick up the phone and tell you otherwise.”

Tyler chokes back a sob. “NOW!” The scream is accentuated with another violent bang on the table, which spurs Tyler from the chair.

He runs from the dining room and through the house, avoiding the living room to sprint up the stairs. He grabs the largest backpack he owns, and starts tossing shit into it at the speed of light. His notebook is the first thing. His clothes, his phone, the charger, and other miscellaneous stuff laying around his room. He tosses the pack of razor blades in as a second thought, struggling to zip the bag up. _He now realizes just how much he fucking wants to get away from his family._

He doesn’t even think about where he’ll go. He doesn’t think at all. He just picks up the backpack and runs down the stairs, making a beeline for the door. And then he _runs_ away from his house, where the football lays abandoned in the cold grass and the little glass panels of the door hide just enough to make his family look normal.

 _Shit,_ it’s cold out here. Luckily he’s wearing his hoodie, but the holes in his jeans are not forgiving to his legs, which feel like they’re turning blue. He stops for a breath once he’s a few blocks away from his house… away from his family. _Away from his father._

He unzips the backpack and pulls out his phone. He only has one friend, and he doesn’t even know if he can trust her. Oh, well. It’s probably better to bother her than to… trek to the bad side of town and… sleep with the homeless people. Not that he has much against homeless people, but Melanie’s looking pretty appealing right now.

With shaking fingers, he unlocks the phone. He’s so _cold,_ inside and out. He just feels… unfeeling. He _can’t_ feel anything right now. He just feels _numb._ And shock. Numb and a little shocked.

**_can i stay at your house?_ **

It’s a little direct, but there’s really nothing else to ask her first. He waits until he sees the little “…” bubble pop up in the corner.

_i’m staying at a friend’s house, actually, what’s up?_

**_oh… my dad kicked me out…_ **

_what the hell? dude, i’ll ask him if you can stay with us._

**_no its ok…_ **

_tyler, no. you probably have no where else to go if your asking me, dont sweat it, he said yes._

**_ok…_ **

Seconds later, she sends him a street address that’s luckily not too far from where he is. **_thanks, melanie._**

_anytime, ok?_

He starts to fast-walk in the direction of the street, because regular walking gives the cold too much of an opportunity to sneak up under his clothes and chill him to the bone, and he’s too hungry and exhausted to full-out run again. Unfortunately, the way to the road takes him back past his house, and he’s afraid that his dad’ll be waiting there with a baseball bat or maybe a shotgun, so he takes a side road that adds five minutes to his journey.

 _362… 362…_ he scans the road for the house with that address. His eyes land on a large, empty-looking house at the very end of the cul-de-sac, with only one car in the driveway. It doesn’t look like any of the lights in the front of the massive house are on.

_What if she gave me the wrong address? What if she’s just pranking me?_

He hesitantly walks up the path on the lawn, approaching the doors and seriously debating whether or not he should just try to sneak back into his house once it got late. It’s already dark, though, and he really doesn’t want to be caught walking around strange neighborhoods this late. Instead, he rings the doorbell and jumps back about ten feet when he hears how loud it is. How is Melanie going to feel about him intruding on her night with a friend? How are her friend’s parents going to react to him showing up? What if it’s a party? Oh, _god – what if they’re more than just friends and Melanie was planning on doing more than just “staying” the night with them?_

He cowers as far away as possible from the door as he hears footsteps from within the house. He hears a lock sliding, and the door falls open.

“Tyler!” Melanie calls, waving at him. “Come in.”

He follows her reluctantly into the house, taking off his worn-out Vans when she tells him to. She laughs at his colorful, mismatched socks. “Nice socks.”

“Shut up,” he says, following her through a vast, white kitchen. So far, the house seems… almost… unlived in. Too modern and clean. Not personal enough. There isn’t so much as a picture hanging in the kitchen and the living room is just as boring. He can hear a television from somewhere within the house, and it seems to be getting louder as Melanie tugs him along through the dark, maze-like home.

“It’s just us,” she says. “His parents went out of town, so they won’t bother us.”

Tyler wonders who _he_ is, but silently follows her until they pass over the threshold under a large, open doorway, into a room that contains an obscurely large television and an enormous couch. _Ugh,_ Tyler wishes he could just fall asleep on that couch, it looked so soft and warm.

That’s when he notices the head of dyed red curls… the boy stretched out on the couch…

“ _Josh_?”

He turns to Melanie and gives her a hurt, betrayed look. “ _This_ is where you brought me?”

Josh looks up, away from the TV, a look of shock imminent on his face. “Him?”

“Sorry, sorry, I can explain,” she says desperately. “Please, Tyler, don’t run away. He won’t hurt you, I promise. He’s my friend and he won’t do anything bad to you.”

Tyler dubiously allows her to bring him over to the enormous couch, and he settles several feet away Josh. Melanie lays between them, providing a good six-foot barrier. “Tyler, my parents kicked me out, so I came here. Josh, Tyler’s dad kicked him out, so he’s the friend I told you about. I didn’t think you’d have a problem with him.”

“I mean, _I_ don’t, but he’s convinced I was doing stupid shit to bully him, so he’s, like, afraid of me,” argues Josh, acting as though Tyler isn’t even there. “I tried to tell him, and he’s still being difficult.”

“Tyler – Tyler – you’re – he’s… he doesn’t trust people, right, Ty?”

Tyler shakes his head quickly, tears forming in his eyes. He grabs the backpack from the floor on his feet, getting ready to stand up from the couch. “I’ll… I’ll go… after all… he doesn’t want me here…” He looks so _hurt,_ so _scared,_ so _vulnerable,_ and Josh hates seeing that.

“No, we both know that’s not happening, Tyler,” Melanie says. “If your dad kicked you out, then you’re not fucking going back into that house until it’s safe to go back.”

“But – ”

“You don’t have to talk to Josh, you don’t have to interact with him. Hell, you don’t even have to look at him. But I’m not letting you go back to your house, okay? Not after… not after what you told me the other day.”

Tyler lets go of his backpack, reluctantly relaxing back into the couch. Josh gives him a sidelong glance and Melanie declares, “I’m going to go get some snacks!”

Tyler’s stomach gives an audible rumble, and he feels himself sinking into the couch. He brings his knees up into his chest and, laying on his side, watches Melanie’s retreating back and her ever-present pink ponytails disappearing around the corner. He focuses his attention to the television, but it’s playing something in another language, and he’s too tired to pay attention to the subtitles. Instead, he just watches the violent-looking animation and tries to ignore Josh, who’s contently stroking a cat that’s sleeping on his lap.

Tyler feels himself falling asleep like that, all curled up, shivering, and he never sees Josh when he gets up to throw a blanket over him. He never sees when Melanie returns to the room carrying cans of Red Bull and bags of Skittles. He never sees when she stares at him, with the blanket draped over his frail body, and turns to smirk at Josh.


	8. october 5, part iii / october 6, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yeah! back to back chapters! this one’s celebratory since i got over my writers block, thanks to ptv (if you arent already a fan u need to go LISTEN TO THEM.)
> 
> ALSO, heyy! guys!!! this story officially has 30,000 words in microsoft word, so its not gonna end anytime soon!!!
> 
> also thank you guys for all the wonderful comments <3
> 
> |-/

 

**october 5, part iii**

Tyler wakes in the middle of the night. He rubs his eyes and stares at the room around him. Melanie is crashed on the floor underneath him, an open bag of Skittles spilled next to her head. Her mouth is open – she’s drooling. He sits up, _really_ having to go take a piss, but when he puts a foot down on the ground, he accidentally kicks some sort of can halfway across the room. Melanie doesn’t wake up, but he hears someone on the opposite side of the couch stirring.

 _Shit, Josh is here,_ he thinks, shrugging away from the blanket – wait, _blanket? Okay, a blanket appeared overnight –_ and he quickly stands up. He wants to get _away_ from Josh, he doesn’t want to be in the same _room_ as Josh – he wants to be _away,_ because Josh _said_ he’d be Tyler’s friend and it turned out he was the one leaving the notes –

_The notes that made him cut himself over and over again –_

Tyler scrambles to pull his hoodie sleeves, which have ridden up during his sleep, back down over the white bandages. The moonlight in this room is too bright, _surely_ Josh saw him –

“Tyler?”

 _Shit, shit, shit,_ he _forgot_ to pack… bandages… shit, Josh is standing up and _walking towards Tyler…_

He stands, shaking, like a deer caught in the headlights, gripping onto his hoodie sleeves, feeling the cold of the night creeping into the holes of his jeans and the cold from the tiled floor seeping through his socks. His silly, mismatched, colorful socks.

Josh rubs at his eyes and runs a hand through his hair. Tyler can’t help but think of how _attractive_ he looks – _no, bad thoughts, bad thoughts, he_ hates _you, he wants to trick you and he wants to hurt you._

“Tyler, what’s… what’s?” Josh’s incoherent thought stops as he touches his own wrists, still slowly walking towards Tyler.

“Get away from me,” Tyler says desperately, backing through the door and into the hallway. His back hits a wall, and he stops, staring at Josh.

“Look, I’ve told you, I don’t hate you, I’m not going to hurt you, and I _wasn’t_ the one putting the notes on your locker,” Josh says exasperatedly. _Liar, liar, liar,_ the voice inside of Tyler says, sing-songy and so incredibly _right._ Josh just wants to _hurt_ him – he’s like all the other ‘nice’ people at Tyler’s school. The ones who pretend to be his friend… and they go behind his back to hurt him…

He darts down the hallway and tries to remember the way back to the kitchen. He saw a bathroom on the way to the TV room, and he wonders if he’ll be able to retrace his steps back to it. He isn’t able to – there’s no landmarks in this house; no pictures, no paintings, no art – but he finds a different bathroom, so he quickly locks himself inside. After using the toilet, he sits on the counter and listens for footsteps. None come, so he feels relieved. Josh didn’t come chasing after him.

He rolls up his sleeves and looks at the bandages. He probably doesn’t need them anymore, but he really doesn’t want anyone to see his arms. They’ll just make fun of him… they’ll ridicule him, call him weak and stupid. He _doesn’t_ want to be weak – god, he hates it when the voices take over and he gives in to them. He hates how he feels so completely powerless – and yet so powerful at the same time – when he cuts. He _hates it._

 _He knows_ it’s irrational to believe the voices in his head. He hates that he knows that – and yet he still listens to them. They’re all he’s even known and they always seem _right_. Josh can deny all he wants, but Tyler’s still sure that he was the one putting notes on his locker. And Tyler doesn’t want to be near him at all.

He’s so _attractive –_ he was so _nice –_

Tyler shuts out the thoughts and instead hops down from the counter, mentally evaluating how hard it’ll be to fall asleep on the cold bathroom floor. He knows he’ll never find his way back to the TV room, and he isn’t about to call for help, so he’s just going to have to make do.

 

* * *

 

 

**october 6, part i**

Tyler wakes up some time later, blasted from his sleep from the sudden appearance of loud music. The music contains lots of drums and screaming – okay, he can deal with this. He becomes aware of his surroundings immediately, trying to figure out where he is.

 _Spaghetti… Dad yelling… Melanie… the TV… oh, god, I’m at Josh’s house, and I slept on the fucking tile floor of a bathroom._ He sits up and tries to rub some feeling into his legs, which are pretty unhappy in their current situation. After some considerable attempts at recirculation, he realizes how _cold_ he is.

Fuck, it’s fucking cold in October.

He stands on wobbly legs and unlocks the door. He’s gotta find his backpack so he can get another shirt to put on under this hoodie. Preferably a long sleeve one… last night’s events flash before his eyes, and he remembers Josh, still half asleep, slurring, “Tyler, what’s… what’s?” and pointing to his wrists. He’d seen the bandages.

Tyler stumbles through the loud house, which seems to have speakers installed in every part of each room. The metal music is blasting in every room he passes through. He hears loud voices over the music and, despite knowing he’ll have to see Josh, he migrates towards them, hugging himself through the hoodie. It’s so goddamn cold and he feels so numb inside.

A few minutes later, he finds himself stumbling over the kitchen threshold, greeted by the smell of… ahh… bacon and eggs sizzling on the stove. Melanie’s expertly flipping bacon on a griddle, and Josh is scraping eggs around in a pan and looking confused as Melanie directs him. She glances over her shoulder and smiles.

“Tyler! There you are!” she shouts over the music, abandoning the bacon and shoving the spatula into   
Josh’s free hand. She runs toward him and envelopes him in a warm hug. “Hey, we’re inviting people over for breakfast.”

She sees the look on his face and laughs. “Don’t worry, it’s just the guys from lunch – no bad guys!”

Tyler waits for her to let go of him and stares at his feet. “Um, how do I get back to my backpack?”

She laughs again. “Josh’s house is fucking huge, right?” and then she tells him detailed instructions on how to find the TV room again. He lugs the backpack back into the bathroom and changes into a different pair of jeans and a new shirt, this time layering under his hoodie. He brings the bag back to the room and returns to the kitchen. Melanie’s shoveling steaming eggs onto a plate, and she waves the spatula at him when she sees him.

“Want food?”

He nods, going to accept it from her and sitting at the island in the middle of the kitchen, which is empty except for a ring of keys tossed aimlessly on top. Just as he brings the fork to his mouth, the door behind him is flung open and some guys run inside.

“Pete! Pattycakes! And Breadbin! Hey,” Melanie greets them, waving a piece of bacon in the air. “Josh’s house has _so_ much bacon, we won’t even have to fight over it today!”

The kid with the forehead, Brendon, rushes forward and grabs the bacon straight off of the griddle, burning his hand in the process. “Ow, shit! What the hell! Why is it hot!”

“You should wait for it to actually cook first, Mr. Forehead,” Melanie says, playfully smacking him over the head as he curses and runs over to the sink. Pete and Patrick sit down at the island together, except they’re really _together –_ Patrick is sitting on Pete’s lap. They start to make out and Tyler looks away quickly, going back to the eggs. Holy _shit,_ they are the best eggs ever. Despite the confused look on Josh’s face as he made them, they’re damn good.

Tyler wolfs down the food and waits for Melanie to come back around with the pan of eggs. She smirks as he stares at the pan, and scrapes more on to the plate. Once he actually stops to think about it, he hasn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday. He’s really, really hungry.

And still so _numb._

He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be back at home, before he heard his dad talking about him like that. He wants to be back at home with his perfect family and his loving parents that never yell at him and accept him for who he is.

He doesn’t want to be eating eggs that Josh made. He doesn’t want to be eating Melanie’s bacon. He should be at home, sitting around the table with his parents and eating _their_ breakfast.

He doesn’t want to be here with _Josh,_ who _hates_ him. He doesn’t want to be in Josh’s house, listening to Josh’s music, and he doesn’t want to hear Josh’s friends yelling over his music.

 _He wants to leave._ No, he _has_ to leave. He feels like an intruder – the only person he knows here is _Melanie,_ and even she seems like she’s only being nice to him. She doesn’t actually _care._ He _has_ to leave.

 As soon as that thought crosses his mind, he realizes –

_he doesn’t have anywhere else to go._

 

 

* * *

 

 


	9. october 6 part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHH thank you guys so much for 100 kudos like i dont even deserve this what even

**october 6, part ii**

* * *

 

“We could go to the park and terrorize the children,” Pete suggests, flung dramatically over the couch with his head on Brendon’s lap.

“We could terrorize the pigeons, I _love_ terrorizing pigeons,” Brendon says, tugging at Pete’s hair. Josh is sprawled on the floor beneath them, next to Melanie, and Tyler is curled on the opposite end of the couch, wishing he didn’t feel like such an outsider. “Josh, do you have any bread in this fucking house?”

“Yeah, lots of fucking bread,” Josh says lazily.

“We could just go to the park and enjoy the sunshine like normal people,” suggests Melanie.

“Ew! Sun! _I’ll burn_ ,” wails Pete, hissing.

“There’s sun coming in from the windows, dumbass,” Patrick says, appearing in the doorway and plopping down next to Brendon.

“Babe, you shouldn’t call your boyfriend a dumbass, it’s not very nice,” Pete whines.

Patrick rolls his eyes.

“C’mon, we have to do something,” whines Melanie. “This is boring.”

“Okay, pigeon terrorizing it is,” Brendon says cheerfully, throwing Pete from his lap and standing up. “Josh, show me the bread.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Oh my god, it’s like fifty shades of pigeon,” Pete says. Josh snickers and adjusts Melanie on his back. They’re standing around in the park, watching two pigeons… having sex. “This is the kinkiest shit _ever_.”

Melanie shrieks and falls off of Josh’s back, thudding to the ground and scaring away the mating pigeons. “Ah, shit! Josh, you fucking suck at piggy back rides.”

“You fucking scared away the pigeons!” Pete snaps, and Melanie rolls over and stands up, brushing off her jeans.

“Fuck you,” she says, playfully pushing at him. “Hey, Tyler! C’mon!” She crouches down on the grass.

“Uh…”

“C’mon, you’re like, a hundred pounds,” she says, looking over her shoulder at him. “On my back, Joseph!”

He hesitantly jumps onto her back, clinging onto her like a koala as she jumps around to adjust him on her back. It’s not that he’s scared of falling or anything, but he doesn’t want to look stupid in front of her friends. They’ll probably just laugh at him.

“Hey, Ashley just texted me. She said she picked Hayley up. They’re on their way,” Brendon calls from his position in a tree, where he’s tossing bread to the pigeons.

“We can go to taco bell!” crows Pete. “Josh’s treat, of course!”

Tyler, again, feels uncomfortable, like he’s an intruder in this perfect, fun group of friends. He’s a black cloud, the problem child to pity, and they’re just letting him be around because they’re too nice to send him away. None of them have said anything mean to him, _but he knows they’re thinking it,_ if the voice in his head is telling him so, _it_ must _be true._

Not only does he feel uncomfortable in the group, but he feels uncomfortable on Melanie’s back. He tries to loosen his grip on her to let her know that he wants to drop, but she holds tighter. “Tyler, it’s either on my back, or on the ground with the rest of the peasants.”

“Brendon’s in a tree,” he reminds her.

“Brendon doesn’t count as a human being, he’s more like… hmm… a… a parasite.”

“A parasite with a giant forehead,” Patrick says from his cross-legged position on the ground. He, Pete, and Josh are sitting a few feet away from the group of pigeons, occasionally reaching out to try and touch them.

“Did I just hear someone trash-talking my forehead?” Brendon calls, leaning out of the tree and frowning. “I swear to god, if someone is trash-talking my forehead – ”

“Ashley! Hayley!” yells Melanie out of nowhere, jerking forwards and starting to run, nearly dropping Tyler in the process. He holds on for dear life as she barrels towards the girls, who are walking down the sidewalk. “MY WIVESSSSS!”

They collide in a hug so tight that it nearly throws Tyler from Melanie’s back from surprise. The two girls are not only hugging Melanie, but they’ve included Tyler in the hug, grabbing onto his back as they surround the pair.

“This is Tyler,” Melanie explains when they finally break away.

“Oh, yeah, I saw you guys hanging out at lunch the other day,” the red-haired girl says.

“Y’know, Melanie _never_ gives me piggyback rides,” the blue-haired one exclaims, poking Tyler’s shoulder. He – daringly, seeing as these are strangers who probably hate him anyways – sticks his tongue out at them.

“Tyler, give Ashley a turn,” Melanie says, and he loosens his grip, relieved to finally leave the bumpy ride on her back. They start heading back to the other group of people.

“Are - are those pigeons?” asks Hayley. Her voice heightens into a yell. “Pete, stop molesting that pigeon!”

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m – I’m fine, really,” mutters Tyler, unwilling to let _Josh_ pay for his food.

“Like hell you are. I saw how you ate at breakfast. Umm, four beef burritos, please,” she says, directing her voice towards the cashier. Pete and Patrick order, and Josh forks over the money, which is way more than Tyler’s ever spent at a Taco Bell, combined. No one in the group really complains that he’s paying. Tyler _really_ doesn’t want to eat food that Josh has paid for, or even be around Josh much longer.

It’s so awkward, and it feels like they’re only doing this for him to be nice. Out of pity.

 _God,_ he’s such a fuckup.

They situate themselves around the largest table in the establishment. They probably look _wild_ to the onlooker – an emo, a fedora man, a boy with a giant forehead, a red-haired guy with gauges, and girls with pink, blue, and red hair. Tyler feels like he doesn’t belong, with his un-dyed hair and his oversize hoodie and holey jeans.

He stares at his lap until Melanie pokes him. “Hey.”

He looks up and blinks at her. The group is talking about how much they hate the history teacher, Mr. Carpenter. It’s a conversation he can gladly join, and, for once, he feels like he belongs as he joins them in their complaints about the homework and assignments in that class. History is easily his least favorite subject, and Ashley _and_ Pete can agree with him on that. He is so immersed in the conversation that he doesn’t even notice when Melanie stands up and returns with the giant bags of Taco Bell food and starts to toss random articles of food at people.

“Tyler,” she says, sliding two of the beef burritos towards him. He reluctantly takes them, actually quite hungry, but still not really wanting to eat Josh’s food. Unfortunately, everyone else is already eating, and he doesn’t want to seem ungrateful, so he unwraps the burrito and starts eating it. God, Taco Bell is _so_ good.

Brendon lets out a long moan from around his burrito, and Tyler wonders if _everything_ that Brendon does is sexual, because it certainly seems that way. He wonders if Brendon and Josh are dating, remembering how Brendon had climbed all over Josh the other day. He averts his gaze back over to Pete, who is drenching a taco in Diablo sauce. He watches with mild interest as Pete takes a bite and starts coughing violently. Patrick whacks him on the back, sighing, looking as if this is normal.

“Fucking hell,” Pete wheezes, and before Tyler even realizes what’s happening, everybody is ripping open packets of Diablo sauce and daring each other to drink them. Brendon throws his head back and squirts the entire packet down his throat, squeezing his eyes shut and swallowing.

“EYYYYYY!” he yells, punching the air in celebration. “Josh, you owe me five bucks!”

“Not if I do it,” Josh says, grabbing a packet and repeating Brendon’s actions. He makes a pained face, nearly spitting the spicy shit from his mouth, but he keeps it down and smirks triumphantly at Brendon.

“Jesus,” Melanie groans, rolling her eyes. “They’re trying to kill themselves or something.”

 

* * *

 

 

Tyler feels exhausted. After Taco Bell, Josh’s friends – well, it was mainly Brendon’s decision – decided to invade the giant playground near the park. Tyler mostly hung back on the swings, but he watched as they went down the concrete slides on cardboard boxes and climbed through netted jungle gyms. For teenagers, they acted like children – and they also did a pretty good job of scaring away the actual children. They only left when it started to get dark and some security guy threatened to call the police if they didn’t leave and stop terrorizing children. (Apparently, dangling bread at toddlers from the top of a slide was not welcomed behavior.)

It’s fucking cold outside, and Tyler’s hoodie doesn’t do shit for him as they head back to Josh’s house. He wonders how the hell Ashley is wearing a tank top. It’s only when they’re back in the living room, chilling out, that he realizes –

_he didn’t write in his notebook yesterday._

He thinks about it for a while. There wasn’t really anything to _write_ yesterday. Yesterday just seemed like an empty, hollow day. He finally decides – it’s probably good to leave it empty, so he doesn’t have to remember yesterday.

Pete and Patrick and the rest of them left a while ago, and it’s just him and Melanie and Josh.

“I’m tired,” he tells Melanie, who is focused on the subtitled animation on the TV. She looks at him and pokes him in the arm.

“Hey, Josh, can I find Tyler a room?”

“Yeah,” he replies, his eyes fixed on the screen. He’s curled with the cat in his lap again. Tyler grabs his backpack and follows Melanie out of the room, down the hall, and to an empty room.

“Half of Josh’s house is guest rooms, so don’t feel bad about staying in here,” she tells him.

“Okay… thanks…” he puts his bag in the room, turning when she calls to him.

“Tyler,” she says, enveloping him in a warm hug. “I’m really sorry about your dad. It really sucks. I just – yeah. Sleep well, okay?”

He nods against her chest as she runs a hand through his hair. Like his mom used to. She lets him go and he turns back into the room, calling out a quiet “goodnight” and trying to hide his tears.

He doesn’t feel like wearing a hoodie to bed, so he changes into a t-shirt, hoping that no one will come into his room until morning. He doesn’t have any clean long-sleeved shirts left, so he’ll have to wear the hoodie no matter what.

He pulls on some sweats and sits on the bed with his journal in hand. He remembers the day’s events and remembers the taste of the burrito on his tongue. _Taco Bell, it’s definitely Taco Bell,_ he thinks. There’s not much else good in his life. He stares at the long, thin scabs on his wrists as he grabs the pencil.

Tears escape from his eyes. _God,_ he hates this. He hates himself more than anything.

He wipes away the tears and writes the words quickly, shutting the notebook and tossing it back into the backpack. He’s definitely going to be crying himself to sleep tonight.

**\-- taco bell.**

* * *

 


	10. october 6, part iii / october 7, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> get prepared to read over 10,000 words of october 7 over the next few chapters lol sorry y'all

**october 6, part iii**

Josh wakes with a start, pulled from his short sleep when a loud explosion flashes across the television screen. He groans, grabbing the remote from the cushion beside him and turning off the TV. It’s probably midnight, and his cat’s not on his lap. He should get to bed.

He gets up and stretches, yawning. Melanie disappeared a while ago with Tyler and never came back. He wanders down the hall towards his room, but stops when he hears a quiet noise coming from one of the rooms. It sounds like… whimpering. Tyler. It’s Tyler.

His mind jumps to perverted conclusions, but after a few more moments of standing there, he realizes that it sounds more like crying than anything else. Yeah, it’s _crying,_ that escalates into full-out sobbing. He wonders if he should go in there to see if Tyler’s okay. Impulsively, he knocks on the door, not even thinking about how Tyler will just ignore him or reject him in some awful way. When there’s no response, he slowly opens the door, revealing a dark room.

Tyler is curled on the bed, under a few layers of blankets, shaking profusely. His outline trembles with every sob. Josh calls his name quietly. “Tyler?”

“Get out,” Tyler yells.

“Wait, Tyler – ”

“Now!” he yells.

“Wait, hang on, can I please talk to you?” Josh asks desperately. “Please, Tyler, I won’t hurt you, just let me talk to you.”

There is no response from the bed, so Josh slowly creeps forward, until he is maybe a foot away from the edge of the bed, where Tyler is positioned, gripping the blankets up to his neck. In the light from the hall, he can see the tears on Tyler’s face and his wide, scared eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Josh asks, kneeling down beside him.

“ _You,_ ” Tyler says, bringing up his hand to rub at his face. It’s then that he remembers he’s only wearing a t-shirt – and that Josh can see the scars on his arms in this light. He immediately places his arm back under the covers, but judging by the shocked look on Josh’s face, he’s seen the scabs. Tyler is about to put his face under the blankets, but he feels Josh’s hand on his arm.

“Let go of me,” he cries, expecting that Josh is going to say something cruel or try to hurt him. But Josh’s touch is gentle and he is silent as he looks at the scabbed cuts on Tyler’s arm. He looks so _hurt,_ like Tyler’s mother did when she learned about the bullying. Like _he’s_ the one hurting, not Tyler. But Tyler fucking hurts and it’s Josh’s fault, nothing Josh says or does will change it.

“Tyler, I’m so sorry,” he says, and Tyler sees Josh coming closer. He frantically jerks back, taking his arm back.

“Go away, it’s all your fault,” he cries. “You’re the one who left the notes. You hate me. You fucking hate me. Get out.”

“I don’t hate you, though! That – that note thing was bullshit! I didn’t do it!”

“LIAR!” Tyler screams, and Josh falls back, shocked. “Liar, liar, l-liar,” Tyler repeats. The voice in his head is chanting it with him.

“Tyler – Tyler – ”

Josh is so close, leaning against the bed, trying to touch him. The voice is reaching a painful height in Tyler’s head. His ears are ringing.

_Just do it, do it and close your eyes. Get him back._

He swings his arm out and hits Josh with all his might. Hard, against the side of his face. His arm catches Josh’s nose during the swing. Immediately, blood spurts out against the comforter, and Josh falls over. Tyler is screaming and suddenly, Melanie is at the door, dragging a blanket around her shoulders and looking horrified.

“Tyler?” she yells. “Josh? What the hell is going on?”

“He’s a _l-liar,_ ” sobs Tyler, collapsing onto the bed and pulling the covers over his head. Josh’s hands shoot up to his nose, eyes wide. Melanie’s mouth hangs open as she observes the blood-dotted blanket, the crippled Josh, and the lump in the bed that’s Tyler. Her eyes dart around and she runs over to Josh, grabbing his arms and hauling him up.

“He _hit_ me,” he says, voice muffled from his hands. “He fucking _hit_ me.”

Melanie sighs and sits on the bed. “Josh? Can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“ _Get the fuck out,_ ” she says. Josh rolls his eyes and stumbles out, muttering and clutching his nose. Melanie pulls back the blankets as soon as the door shuts. “Tyler?”

He mumbles something and turns away from her, clutching his arms to his chest. She frowns and leans over him. “I made him leave. Can we talk?”

He moans and shakes his head. His fist hurts from hitting Josh, and he doesn’t want her to see the cuts on his arm either. He just wants her to go _away,_ but she’s still sitting there, still looking at him with that same sad, sympathetic look on her face. Still there. Still sitting and still looking.

“I h-hate h-him,” he whispers, looking into her eyes. His chocolate irises are shiny with tears and he starts to sob again. She kneels next to him, slowly running her hands through his hair.

“Shh,” she says. “It’s okay. You’ve been through so much in the last few days, Tyler. Plus, Josh can be a bit of an asshole anyways.” She gives a weak laugh but he stays silent. Then –

“I-I d-don’t understand,” Tyler says shakily. “He put the notes on my locker. But he wanted to be my friend. And he’s still nice to me. Why?”

Melanie considered that. “Um, it’s possible… that… you know… he didn’t do it?”

“No, no, they said he did,” Tyler whispers desperately. Melanie gives him a sympathetic look and continues to play with his hair.

“Is there really any reason for Josh to have done that? Josh _knows_ you’re not… y’know… those things.”

“But I _am,”_ Tyler insists. “I am gay and fucked up and stupid. Those notes told the truth!”

“No they _didn’t,_ ” Melanie tells him forcefully. “Okay, maybe you’re gay, but that isn’t anyone’s business to make fun of. See, I’m gay, and Josh is gay, and most of the other people you saw at lunch today were bi. See, Pete and Patrick were practically having sex in public. Do you really think that Josh cares about you being gay at all?”

Tyler can’t really argue with that, but that still doesn’t explain why somebody saw Josh physically putting the notes on his locker. His brain is overwhelmed with a sudden feeling of tiredness. He slumps down into the bed and pulls the blankets higher.

“I’m going to sleep,” he tells her. She gets up, sighing, and leaves, closing the door behind her.

 

* * *

 

 

**october 7, part i**

The office door opens with a gush of cold wind, and a burly man wearing a pair of overalls walks in. He’s carrying a small USB stick in his hand, whistling merrily as he approaches the front desk.

“How may I help you?” asks the elderly woman behind the desk. She has a disapproving expression on her face, glaring at the mud that the man is tracking in onto the carpet. It’s raining outside, giving the school a gloomy atmosphere.

“I’ve got the security tapes for the second and third of October here,” he says, placing the USB on the counter in front of him. She reaches up and grabs it, looking confused. “I guess something happened and y’all needed them.”

“On Wednesday? Hmmm… I’ll have to check with the guidance counselor…” she mutters to herself, writing a note on a pad of paper. The man clears his throat. “Oh, thank you,” she says, looking up with the ‘go away now’ expression on her face. After years of enduring stubborn parents, angry siblings, and hateful teens, she’s perfected an ‘I don’t want any more of your bullshit’ expression. The guy leaves and she picks up the intercom phone, calling for the guidance counselor.

 

* * *

 

 

“Let’s watch october 2nd first?”

“Yeah, fast forward to 2:30, that’s when seventh period starts,” the guidance counselor suggests when the vice principal opens the file. He fast forwards through the video until the timestamp reads 2:33, a little after the bell rings. He watches the high schoolers run through the halls, tiny like ants from the hall camera, rushing to their classes. Abruptly, the hall is empty.

“Keep going.”

All of a sudden, a grainy figure exits the door closest to the camera and starts walking in the direction of the planning room. Turning their head, they stop and look at a specific locker – Tyler’s locker.

They stoop down next to it and, looking around quickly, start removing the notes from the locker.

“Well, it sure looks like that boy… uh… Joshua…”

The guidance counselor leans in and studies the grainy boy. He’s wearing some sort of hat, and a jacket whose back sports an enormous logo. She hates to admit it, but the kid does look a lot like Josh, especially when he moves away, crumpling the notes in his hands and throwing them in a trash can. His ears are even stretched wide enough to be visible by the low-quality camera.

“Go to lunchtime the next day,” she sighs.


	11. october 7 part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the truth is about to... COME OUT! something that i have yet to do to my family, lol, this closet is way too small... help... 
> 
> anyways i hope you like my disgustingly filler-like chapter that has nothing interesting in it. 
> 
> and if i havent already said this (god i have bad memory) thanks for 1000 views y'all

**october 7, part ii**

* * *

 

“Jesus, Bren, what happened to you?” Josh asks jokingly, pushing at Brendon as they meet outside of the school gates, safe from the rain under the little pavilion. Brendon frowns.

“Jesus, actually. Or rather, my apparent lack of Jesus.”

“Your _parents_ did this?” Josh says incredulously. Brendon hangs his head, mute, wishing his hair was long enough to hide the giant bruise around his swollen eye. “ _Again_? Those fuckers!”

“Apparently, I need more Jesus so that I become straight, or else I’m going to hell,” mutters Brendon. “I skipped church yesterday. What happened to you?”

Josh remembers the fact that Melanie forced him to put a bandaid on his nose that morning, despite the fact that it seemed fine. “I got in a fight.” He glances behind him, a good twenty yards between him and Melanie, who’s talking animatedly to Tyler, who looks kind of lost. They don’t seem to mind getting wet in the rain.

“Dude…”

“Hey, come here,” Josh says. Brendon reluctantly walks to his side.  Josh wraps an arm around him and Brendon rests his head on Josh’s shoulder. They walk into the school together, heading to the cafeteria to meet up with Ashley, Hayley, and the rest. The school is serving those awful, tiny, pre-packaged pancakes and, naturally, they’re having a pancake war, throwing the midget pancakes into each others’ hair.

Josh takes one off of Pete’s head and eats it as he walks past him, instantly regretting the decision as he starts to chew it. “It tastes like emo hair dye and bad shampoo,” he jokes, but really, it tastes like Low School Budget and Free Breakfast (if that even counts as a flavor – it was probably closer to Shit).

“Hey, I bet your hair tastes like that too,” Pete shoots back, accompanying his insult with a pancake that bounces off of Josh’s forehead. Josh grabs a handful and pelts them at all of his friends, taking extra care to hit Pete several times. Brendon sits down next to him, unusually quiet. Josh bumps him gently with his shoulder and Brendon bumps him back, smiling a little.

It’s been like this ever since Josh could remember; Brendon did something stupid and his parents flipped their shit, stepping onto their Godly Soapboxes and thinking they had the right to “beat the homosexuality out of him”. He’d show up at school sore, aching, tired, and sometimes starving, haven being denied food. It seemed as though a lot of Josh’s friends were like this. Melanie’s parents were similar, and, from what Josh could gather, Tyler’s dad had kicked him out.

 _Tyler…_ no matter how hard Josh tries to think of a reason, he can’t figure out how somebody had kicked _Tyler_ out of a house. Small, innocent, sad Tyler, who doesn’t seem to be obnoxious, doesn’t have an annoying girlfriend. Tyler who speaks quietly and keeps his head down. Kicking him out of a house seems _wrong_ on the same level as kicking a five-year-old out into the streets is wrong. Sure, he had punched Josh, but after that he seemed to be in more shock than Josh was.

Maybe it’s because he’s gay, like with Brendon. Josh has never known what that’s like, because he’s never come out to his parents – they’re always so busy with work and business trips that he never has time to even ask them to talk. He can’t even remember the last time they ate dinner together.

 _Tyler…_ once again, his thoughts are drawn back to the boy, who sits huddled diagonally to Josh, next to Melanie. They’re still talking, so quietly that Josh can’t hear them. Tyler’s hands are stuffed in his hoodie pockets, and he’s shaking.

A feeling of guilt washes over Josh. An irrational feeling of guilt. He remembers those long red scabs crossing Tyler’s arms, how Tyler had shouted that they were his fault. Fresh scabs… from maybe three or four days ago… Josh remembers sitting in the waiting room at the guidance office, seeing Tyler dart from the room, crying. Was that the day when he did it? Did he go home and do it? Was he crying like that the whole time? Josh knows he _shouldn’t_ feel guilty – he hasn’t done anything wrong – but he feels like… maybe he should have been nicer to Tyler, tried to convince him more. Maybe he should have been taking those notes off of the locker all year.

_No…_

He is pulled from his thoughts by the obnoxious giggling coming from beside him. He glares, staring at Pete, who’s the one laughing. As he turns his head, he feels the pancakes – stacked on top of his head – topple. Pete was probably doing that the whole time he was thinking. Yeah. Great. He grabs the remaining pancake and pelts it at him. It hits him on the side of his face, the sticky pancake accumulating a bit of eyeliner before it slides down his cheek and to the ground.

“Dude, you messed up my eyeliner,” Pete says. “Not fucking cool.”

“You messed up my hair,” Josh retorts, but he can’t really care less about his fucking hair. He glances at the clock – they’re going to be stuck in here for another half hour before school starts.

He notices Tyler put his head on the table sideways, still watching Melanie talk to him, using his arms as a pillow. He wonders if Tyler didn’t get any sleep.

God, for some reason, he can’t stop thinking about Tyler.

 

* * *

 

 

Tyler is cold, and wet. He has an extra hoodie in his locker, but he doesn’t want to go there anymore. Not after… Josh. Not after the notes. He’s done with his locker and he’ll do anything to avoid going back. So he pretends that he’s not shaking and lays his head on the table, watching Melanie’s lips move but not hearing her voice. After a few minutes she drifts away and returns with a bag of steaming pancakes, the plastic crinkling as she throws it down on the table in front of him. She offers him one when she opens it, and he accepts it, having not ate since Taco Bell yesterday afternoon. It tastes like shit, but it’s warm inside of his stomach. He feels his eyes slipping shut as he listens to the quiet rumbling of people talking around him.

Melanie swings her arm around his shoulders and turns to talk to the red-haired girl next to her. _Hayley,_ Tyler thinks. He gazes at them with half-closed eyes, his cheek pressed to the table. Melanie’s arm around him is comforting and pleasingly weighted, anchoring him away from his bad thoughts. He feels strangely at peace right now.

He feels Melanie’s arm moving away after a few minutes, and she grabs his hand to tug him up. It’s time to get to class, the bell’s going to ring in a few minutes. He watches as the group splits up, exiting the cafeteria at different doors. He mentally prepares himself for the cold before he steps outside into the rain, sprinting to the nearest roofed sidewalk. He has to leave the safety of the roof in order to get to the media center, but luckily the rain has calmed down a little.

He awkwardly walks about ten feet behind Josh, leaving the sea of students behind as they approach the isolated building. No one else is waiting there yet, and the doors are locked, so Tyler just pulls up his hood and sinks to the concrete floor, hugging his knees and watching the stream of high schoolers running through the roofed sidewalks and into different halls.

He feels his head drooping once again. He’s so _tired._ He didn’t sleep at all last night. He cried for half the night, and when he finally forced himself to stop, he was too afraid that Josh would come back in his room, so he sat in a huddled pile under the blankets until the sun came up. His eyes are all puffy from crying, with black bags underneath.

He picks at the hole in his jeans, ignoring Josh, who’s leaning against the brick wall and scrolling through his phone. Out of nowhere, he feels a sneaker nudging his legs – almost a kick, but not quite.

“Hey, faggot,” he hears from above him. He doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t look up. He can tell it’s one of those popular kids who scares him, judging by the ringing laughter around him – a couple of the boy’s friends laughing in that unintelligent, mocking way that boys tend to laugh.

They stop abruptly. Tyler hears a thud and a yelp. He tears his gaze off of the ground and looks up – Josh is _standing there,_ in front of him, looking murderous, having roughly pushed the boy away from Tyler.

“Aww, it’s the little faggot’s boyfriend. Did we make you mad, queer? Are you going to try and… gay us to death?”

Josh rolls his eyes. “I’m not his boyfriend, it’s just not okay for you to kick him like that.”

“Oh yeah?” The biggest kid comes forwards, trying to threateningly crack his knuckles. A weak pop rises from his little finger and he makes a pained face. Josh knows that none of these guys can fight.

“Not getting into a fight over here, I hope, boys,” comes the light voice of Mr. Way as he briskly unlocks the door and holds it open. Tyler stands up quickly, waiting for everyone else to walk in before he goes. Mr. Way gives him a sympathetic look and looks around before shutting the door.

“Okay, class! Today we’re actually going to – eh, guess not.” He finishes the sentence in a mutter as the intercom comes to life with a crackle. “Jesus, they love interrupting, don’t they?”

“Attention, teachers and staff. Please send Joshua Dun and Tyler Joseph to the guidance office. I repeat, please send Joshua Dun and Tyler Joseph to the guidance office.”

Mr. Way looks slightly worried as he ushers them out of the room. “Please don’t get expelled, you’re my best students,” he says as they slowly shuffle out of the room.

“Bye, fags!” The words float from the room before the door shuts, following Tyler as he and Josh start walking to the guidance office.

Tyler doesn’t know why they’d be called to the office again. Maybe someone saw Josh shoving the jock away from Tyler.

_Maybe they found the security tapes proving that Josh put the notes on his locker._


	12. october 7, part iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dont read the authors note below if you get triggered, also dont read this chapter, or probably this book because it's only going downhill from here :(

**ok but lovelies, do yourselves a favor and never develop an eating disorder or else you will be sitting at home alone with one (1) cup of celery that counts for breakfast, lunch & dinner and I care about you all so don’t ever do what i have done. if u feel bad inside, like tyler, or even like me, please go get help**

**~ EXTREMELY TRIGGERING CONTENT BEGINS IN THIS CHAPTER ~**

 

* * *

 

**october 7, part iii**

The walk to the office is long and excruciating _( ~~sort of like this fic im sorry~~ )_ and Tyler can’t help but chew his nails as they approach the building. The rain is coming down in sheets now and the wind is throwing it past the roof of the sidewalk, allowing only a narrow strip of dry concrete on one side. He feels the spray of water hitting his already damp hoodie, causing him to shiver violently as he walks slowly behind Josh.

Remnants of Melanie’s black nail polish come off in his mouth and, disgusted, he wipes them off on his hoodie. They taste disgusting. He feels bad about ruining the already-chipped polish, but he’s just too nervous to leave his nails alone. He’s scared about what might happen in the office.

Tyler thinks about how Josh shoved at those boys. He… _protected…_ Tyler from them. Tyler remembers how the boy’s shoe kicked him in the side. He tries to keep himself from crying when he thinks about how much some people hate him.

He stops abruptly behind Josh as he stops and pulls open the door, wordlessly holding it open for Tyler. The secretary directs them back into the same conference room from before, where the vice principal and the guidance counselor are sitting, looking intimidating, with a laptop.

“Tyler, come sit over here by me,” the guidance counselor says, sliding the laptop in between her seat and an empty chair. Tyler reluctantly sits at the conference table next to her, looking at the grainy black-and-white image of one of the empty hallways that’s on the screen. He can barely recognize his locker in the hall – it has all of the notes on it. He swallows, hard.

Tyler looks over the screen and sees the vice principal and Josh having a low conversation. The vice principal puts his hand on Josh’s shoulder. He looks quickly back down at the screen as the guidance counselor presses play.

“That’s your locker,” she says. “This is the third of October. The day that Mrs. Everett found Josh at your locker, okay?”

Tyler nods mutely. He watches the sped-up version of the hall flooding and emptying when the bell rings. Occasionally, a door opens and someone walks out; a pair of girls push through the back doors, a boy wheeling a laptop cart comes rolling down the hall, a teacher walks across the camera’s view holding a cup of coffee. Tyler holds his breath as the counselor frowns and speeds up the video a little faster.

In seconds, the rest of the period flies by, and soon the halls are crowded with people again. The counselor slows things down again, settling back into her chair and motioning for Tyler to watch. The minutes fly by until – out of nowhere – the back doors reopen, and nobody but _Josh Dun_ walks into the building, swinging a pair of earbuds around his finger as he walks by the camera. He heads down the hall, then pauses at Tyler’s locker.

Tyler’s heart hammers. This is the truth. Is he looking around and bending down to make sure no one sees him put notes on the locker? Or is he… _taking them off?_

“What?” he says, confusedly staring at the screen, trying to get a closer look, _anything_ to show him that what he’s seeing is wrong. Josh is methodically tearing the notes off of his locker, throwing them on to the ground by his feet.

“It’s okay, Tyler. We found out the truth. Josh didn’t do anything, and neither of you are in trouble,” she says.

_Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit._

Tyler can’t _breathe._ Josh is going to _hate_ him if he didn’t before. He stares at the monitor as the other English teacher approaches Josh, looking _angry._

He’s _suffocating_ in his own skin. Unable to breathe. He can’t look at the laptop any more. He stands up, throwing the chair back behind him. Tears form in his eyes and he closes them tightly.

_“No…”_

The world is _falling,_ falling down around him and he _can’t breathe_.

 

* * *

 

 

For the second time in one week, Tyler finds himself running out of the conference room, clawing at his throat as he finds himself unable to take deep breaths. He sprints out of the building, ignoring the collective shouts calling behind him; the vice principal, the guidance counselor, and a random security guard join in on the yelling. Josh stands, frozen, in the doorway, watching as Tyler runs out into the rain, instantly becoming soaked.

Tyler’s so cold, so hollow, so _empty_ inside. His hoodie hangs down and the phone in his kangaroo pocket bangs violently against his knees as he runs, probably adding to his already impressive display of bruises. He feels the tears coming out of his eyes faster than ever before. As soon as he pushes through the gates in front of his school, he… _lets go._

The first scream is more of a strangled sob. The next one comes out louder, barely audible over the heavy wind and rain. He _screams_ at the top of his lungs as he runs, the shrill noise finally piercing the air around him.

He can’t believe how _stupid_ he was. He thought _Josh_ did it. He’s so _useless,_ his existence is completely _pointless_ now. Josh was telling him the truth all along, and how did he react? He’d _punched Josh in the nose and screamed at him like a little baby._

His hair is plastered down over his forehead as he sprints down the sidewalk. He doesn’t really have a destination in mind, but when he sees the entrance to the park, he knows that’s where he should go. A glance at his phone tells him it’s 9:55. The bells in the bell tower will go off in 5 minutes.

He’s always thought that would be a beautiful way to go. He’ll climb the stairs all the way to the top, up almost ten flights of stairs, onto the observatory platform. And then…

 

* * *

 

**ASDFGHGSDFKGVJE sorry!!!!!!111!!111111!11111!1111111!!!!! (lmao im such a spaz and god does this fucking celery taste like shit eugh)**


	13. october 7, part iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> guys i couldnt hold off from updating any longer because your reviews are very pleasant and I Care About You All :)

**october 7, part iv (ok but im gonna have to google roman numerals to be able to finish off october 7 lmao)**

 

* * *

 

**TRIGGER WARNING TRIGGER WARNING TRIGGER WARNING!!!! OK DO NOT SUICIDE, DO NOT EVER SUICIDE, I WILL SAD IF U SUICIDE. dO nOT suICIDE!!!!!!**

* * *

 

Josh is a pretty active person, but the stitch that forms in his side becomes really hard to ignore after almost five minutes of non-stop running. Tyler’s barely visible in the rain, probably a good fifty feet in front of him. He thinks about what Tyler _most likely did_ last time he ran out of the conference room, and he doesn’t want to think about Tyler doing that again.

He can’t stop now. He ignores the pain and pours all of his energy into making his feet hit the concrete faster. He needs to fucking catch up with Tyler. If he doesn’t…

he doesn’t want to think about that…

He screams Tyler’s name at the top of his lungs, but even he can barely hear it. He knows the rain is like a giant blanket, thrown over everything and dulling all of the noise to a rhythmic roar.

He watches as Tyler takes a sudden right, crossing the street without looking and darting through the park gates. Josh curses as the light turns green and a string of cars speed down the road, throwing muddy water over his body and keeping him rooted there for almost a minute. Tyler could be _anywhere_ now. Luckily the park is mostly grass, and he sees a dark shadow darting into the bell tower. _Shit, shit, shit,_ Josh thinks. The fucking bell tower is probably a good hundred feet tall, and that… that just… _ugh,_ he pushes the thoughts from his head and surges forwards with a newfound energy.

He’s skidding through the entrance seconds later, pushing through the still-swinging double doors that lead to the stairwell. In here, the rain is quieter, and he can now just barely hear Tyler’s rapid footsteps and incessant sobbing. _Fuck._ He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to make it up the stairs, and a part of him secretly wishes that Tyler will just give up and sit down on one of the steps.

Josh realizes that this isn’t going to happen and he begins taking the stairs five at a time, desperate to catch up with the boy. His footsteps are deafening in the circular tower, and he’s sure that Tyler has realized he’s here by now. Panting, he forces himself to keep going. This is exhausting and he hates it, but he won’t give up.

He’s about halfway there. _Deep breaths._ Three-quarters. The door opens somewhere above him and he sees a flash of lightning. It slams shut. His heart stops in his throat and he flings his body over the final step, falling through the door and stumbling onto the observation platform. An enormous collection of bells is centered in the middle of the tower, the bells ranging from dozens in his height to hundreds the size of his fist, all lined up in neat rows and packed together around gears and wires.

He notices with a feeling of immense relief that the bars going around the entire platform are far too tall to climb, but he’s still… scared.

He runs until he finds Tyler.

Tyler, kneeling on the platform, his eyes wide, his naked phone laying next to him, the case discarded a few feet away. Tyler holding a razor blade. He lowers it to his wrist.

With a deafening roar, the bells spring to life. Josh sees blood spurting out of Tyler’s arm as the blade makes contact with his already scarred wrist. The world is in slow motion as the blade moves in a vertical line down his wrist. Josh lunges for the blade, screaming as high as he can. _Stop, no, stop, Tyler, no!_

He successfully tackles Tyler to the smooth brick platform, but he doesn’t let go of the blade. Josh grabs it as hard as he can, not caring as the blade sinks into his hand. “ _NO!”_ He screams in unison with Tyler. Tyler’s face is red, his expression helpless, the bells clang not even ten feet away from them. Josh can’t hear anything.

“LET GO, DAMN IT!” he roars, trying to rip the blade from Tyler’s grasp. Tyer’s arm is becoming increasingly more bloody and Josh is scared. He grabs Tyler’s hand and flings it away from his wrist, the blade skittering onto the ground a few feet away. The sky briefly flashes and moments later, deafening thunder is heard over the bells.

Josh’s head is pounding from all the noise. He tugs at Tyler’s good arm, trying to get them into the dry area behind the door. Tyler is completely uncooperative, his mouth forming silenced words as his body thrashes against Josh’s hold. They collapse in a bloody pile on the hard wooden floor inside of the tower, and over the railings, Josh sees the floor and it seems miles away.  

The bells stop. Josh’s head clears.

“I need… I need to _call 911_ ,” he mutters, scrabbling through his pockets to find his phone. _Shit!_ He realizes now that he’s left it at school, when tore out of the conference room to follow Tyler.

“N-No 911,” says Tyler loudly, coherently. Josh stops panicking for a minute. OK, he’s alive enough to be talking… maybe it’s not as bad as it looks… Josh doesn’t know much about wrists. Or cutting wrists. Or cutting near veins. Or actually cutting, but he doesn’t really want to think about that.

“Dude, you fucking cut yourself, I have to get you to the fucking hospital whether or not you’re gonna die. Shit, shit _shit,”_ Josh is panicking again, because even if Tyler isn’t going to die he was obviously trying to just seconds ago. Obviously something is _very_ wrong, even wronger than Josh ever thought before.

He knows lots of people that cut. But that’s… a control thing. He didn’t really think much about it when he saw the scars on Tyler’s wrists. Just… he’s never met anyone who actually tried to kill themselves by slitting their wrists. Something is really, _really_ wrong. Josh thinks about how small, thin, scared, and _sad_ Tyler always seems. Damn, _how did he never notice it?_

“I’m n-not g-gonna die,” Tyler mumbles. “N-not deep en-nough.”

_Jesus Christ, what do I do with him?_

 

* * *

 

 

Tyler has never felt more disappointed in anyone. In his entire _life._

He’s so disappointed in _himself._

Disappointed that he believed the teachers. Disappointed that he was so horrible to Josh. Disappointed that he’s done something so bad to his father that his _father hates him._ Disappointed that he couldn’t run faster, couldn’t climb the fence on the tower.

 _Disappointed that he couldn’t cut deeper. Disappointed that he missed the vein by millimeters. Disappointed that he couldn’t cut faster._ His life is a giant pile of _disappointment,_ from his ugly body to his weak voice, the stupid way that he stutters when he’s scared, the stupid hoodies he wears and how everyone stares at him like that.

Tyler is a _disappointment._ He’s a disappointment to the kids around him, who have every reason to make fun of him. God, he’s even a fucking disappointment to the voice in his head who’s been orchestrating almost every detail of his life ever since he can remember.

 _I’m a disappointment,_ he realizes, as he sits in the top of the bell tower, surrounded on all sides by sturdy stone walls and _Josh,_ and rain and lightning and _blood. I’m a fucking disappointment and I should be fucking_ dead _right now, but Josh, for some reason, Josh chased me and I’m not._

So disappointing. He’s disappointed that he didn’t die. And he’s disappointed in himself for thinking like that, because no normal kid would think like that. And he’s disappointed in himself for not being normal.

Right now he just wants to be dead. He doesn’t want to go to the hospital, not to the Fucking Psych Ward For Crazy And Mentallly Fucking Illl Teens, not home. He never wants to see his parents again and he just wishes he was _dead._

He realizes, he _never wants to see his family again._

 _He wants to be dead._ And that’s why he’s fighting Josh. That’s why he wants Josh to go away, so he can use his remaining strength to find some way to parkour his way off the bells and onto the fence and leap down to the ground like some fallen angel. He wants to be _dead,_ but Josh won’t let go of him no matter how hard he fights.

“N-not deep en-nough,” he finds himself mumbling, and he doesn’t know if that’s true, but it _probably_ is because the cut’s nowhere near the vein and it hurts like hell. Somewhere in his mind Tyler knows that if he was dying, it wouldn’t hurt. He’d be happy and that’s how he knows he’s not dying. God, he wishes he was dead _so much._ He can’t stop.

Josh’s grip loosens on his unharmed hand. And that’s when Tyler realizes that Josh’s hand is bleeding, and it makes his stomach turn because _he’s made someone else hurt too,_ not just his family because they have – _had, he’s been kicked out –_  a Stupid Retarded Ugly Faggot Son or a Disappointing Brother Who Won’t Play Football, but someone who _cares_ about him, _Josh who cares about him enough to chase after him and panic and almost call 911,_ Josh, _Josh, who he hurt,_ and _god_ he just wants to die.

He curls into a ball and clutches his cut wrist to his chest, savoring the pain that he deserves. He loves this pain, he tells himself, even though it’s painful and he hates it. He _loves_ it because he deserves it and he’s a _disappointment._

_God. I want to die._

* * *

 

**sorry i kind of triggered myself while i was writing this and now i just feel like shit ok sorry but on the comedic side, halfway through the chapter the word “disappointment” lost its meaning completely and i had an existential crisis through my confused and suicidal crying....**

**This Chapter Sucked ft. I Dont Know How To Write about A Suicidal Teenage Boy Im Sorry, Suicidal Teenage Girl I Can Do, But Not A Boy**


	14. october 7, part v

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: lots of sad, please dont be sad, i love u (self harm)
> 
> also i realise that i kind of... forgot... about the whole journal thing, fucking shame on me, so i have to go back and edit that into 20,000+ words of the story that i've written that hasnt been posted yet

**october 7, part v (yupperoo there are more than 5 parts to this :/)**

**ive got a crush on this girl and its just… _crippling_ … i fall in love with everyone i meet tbh… but holy fuckin shit is she fuckin _hot_ and… unfortunately… straight as a FUCKING pole. shes so nice to me though and i dont think she realises that when i say im gay for her I ACTUALLY MEAN IT??? **

* * *

 

The next hour is a hazy mess of internal fighting and drowning in self-deprecating thoughts, but somehow Josh has managed to drag Tyler back to his pristine, empty white house. It’s empty, Josh explains in a desperate, constant flow of words, because his parents are constantly away on trips and they sent his sister to a special boarding school this semester after she spray painted dicks on the side of a building for attention. A twelve year old, he explains, spray painted _dicks_ on the side of a supermarket wall at 3 AM so that her neglectful parents would pay attention to her. Even then they barely talked to her.

His words are fast and desperate, and every few minutes he finds himself mentioning something about how much he cares about Tyler and how glad he is that he was able to get there in time. It’s true, he doesn’t _ever_ want to lose Tyler, but Tyler doesn’t even seem to notice because he’s just kind of standing there in the hallway with a lost and scared look on his face. He’s completely mute and Josh is _scared_ because he can’t read minds but he knows what kind of stuff is racing through Tyler’s brain, and that makes him want to grab his parents’ abandoned pink fluffy handcuffs and connect him and Tyler together so that he _never_ loses sight of the boy. (Yeah, they left the handcuffs in their closet, which Josh only found because he was looting through his dad’s clothes to find baggy sweatpants and unopened packs of socks. It was a pretty traumatizing experience and he’s never forgotten it.)

Josh considers making a joke about the fluffy handcuffs but he realizes how horrible and tacky that would be, and he thinks about how Tyler would probably just look at him blankly, standing there in the hall with red water dripping off him into the pristine white tile and how _empty_ his eyes would be, devoid of emotion or any kind of sparkle at all. Just… he’d given up.

Josh is acutely aware of how cold it is in his house, but he has no fucking idea how to change the AC and it’s been this cold since his parents left to go to Africa or something in August, right after school started. It doesn’t help that they were just in the rain and large pink puddles are forming under _both_ of their feet, and Tyler is shivering, and Tyler is _crying_ and he looks like he’s about to fall over. His hands are twitching and his legs are trembling and his arm is still wrapped in Josh’s shirt.

Tyler is too _perfect_ to be crying. His features are too beautiful and it looks so _wrong_ to see them screwed up and it hurts Josh when he sees how red Tyler’s eyes are.

Tyler doesn’t move, he’s just completely still and limp, and his breathing is ragged and fast. His heartbeat is hammering away. He lets the older boy lead him into a bathroom, and watches him take a first aid kit out of the drawer. Those horrible peroxide wipes, followed by a roll of gauze and a strip of those weird band-aids that are made to keep together really deep cuts. Butterfly band-aids, or something.

In Tyler’s opinion, the cut isn’t really that deep. But he sits still and silent as Josh carefully takes out the peroxide wipe and gently holds his wrist. He doesn’t feel the sting of the wipe and he wonders if he’s in shock, because he feels like he’s in shock. He blinks a few times. Maybe this isn’t happening. He has this weird feeling like it isn’t actually happening. His head feels very light.

Tyler thinks about the guidance counselor’s voice as she told him about the notes. He remembers what the notes said. He thinks about his father yelling at him, kicking him out of the house. He thinks about how the jock kicked him while he was sitting on the floor. He thinks about how he can count all of his friends on one finger – because Melanie’s really his only friend. He thinks about how he punched Josh when he wouldn’t go away, and how the blood spurted from the redhead’s nose when his fist collided with it. He thinks about how if he has the energy to move his head, he can look down and see his bony knees poking out from the giant holes in his rain-soaked jeans, he can see the cold marble countertop between his legs and the bruises on his skin and the pink heart-patterned band-aid that Melanie gave him this morning to cover up the scrape on his knee. But he doesn’t have the energy to move his head.

He thinks about how he’s crying. He thinks about how much of a disappointment he is. A weak, incompetent, useless human being. He’s sitting here and crying. He feels the tears running down his face and he thinks about how if he poked the bruises on his knees hard enough he could feel them, and that’s how he’d know this is real. But he doesn’t have the energy to even move his numb arm and he just sits there, crying and certain that Josh hates him. He still doesn’t know if this is real or just a dream, and he doesn’t know if he wants to ever distinguish that.

His throat hurts and it’s so tight, there’s some unknown weight on it that makes it hard for him to breathe and swallow. His eyes are stinging. There’s almost certainly blood on his face because there’s blood on Josh’s. Josh. Josh’s hand is cut, and he’s ignoring that. Josh’s hand is cut because he tried to stop Tyler from killing himself and he is fixing Tyler’s arm instead of fixing himself.

Tyler doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel fixed after this. Josh is working hard to fix his arm. Josh. Josh. Tyler can’t get Josh out of his head now. Josh. He

Josh is standing there in front of him, and he’s got Tyler’s right arm in his gentle hand. Tyler smells the sharp peroxide and he hears Josh peeling open a band-aid wrapper. These weird little butterfly band-aids are white and sterile-looking, not like Melanie’s tin of cute pink aesthetic bandages with little shots and stitches and hearts on them. Josh’s face is sad and serious, like he’s at a funeral, but Tyler’s still alive even though he wishes he were dead.

Tyler is shivering. The countertop is so cold against his wet-jean-clad butt, and so is the air around him. He loves cold weather but only outside, he likes snuggling up inside and having the heat on. Josh must love the cold, that’s the only explanation for why it’s so damn _chilly_ in his house. All the time. Josh’s hands are so warm against his numb arm. He feels the band-aids on his skin and he wonders why Josh is doing this.

He can feel Josh’s warmth radiating off of him from barely a foot away. Josh is holding the roll of gauze now, and he’s carefully winding it over Tyler’s arm. Tyler thinks it’s probably too tight but it doesn’t hurt and he doesn’t want to seem bitchy so he keeps his mouth shut. God, he wishes he were dead right now. He has to throw up.

Josh steps away for a few seconds to grab a towel, and Tyler bends down, balancing on his good elbow. The sink is inches from his face. He feels the bile creeping into his throat and before he knows it, he’s vomited into the sink. It’s mostly just water and the remnants of the pancake he ate a few hours ago. His mouth is burning and he hates it. His other arm is lying limp on the counter and his legs are limp and everything about him is limp, and he just collapses onto the counter so he’s lying there on his side like a beached whale and just watching the contents of his stomach slowly trickle down the sink and into the drain. God, he wishes he could just move a little so he could turn on the water and stop looking at the bile. Maybe he could stop up the sink and drown himself right there. But then Josh is in front of him, standing right in front of his face. Tyler is staring right at Josh’s crotch as his legs dangle uselessly from the counter and his body is collapsed on top. His body is bloody. His bile is trickling down the sink. His tears are puddling on the counter and mixing with the pink water from his clothes. Josh is holding a towel and suddenly the towel is on top of Tyler. Hands are massaging the towel into his hair. His bandaged hand is still limp because he is too tired to move it and he is still crying and his mouth is still disgusting and the bile is still burning his tongue and on top of that he _still_ wants to die.

“I’ll get you some clothes,” Josh says. He’s only gone for a few seconds, like he doesn’t trust Tyler to be alone, and he shouldn’t, but Tyler’s just too _tired_ to sit up and loot the medicine cabinet for a handful of Advils or actually go through with his fantasy of drowning himself in the bathroom sink. Instead he stares at the white ceiling. Everything in this room is white. The ceiling, the tiles, the toilet, the frosted glass in front of the white shower. The only thing that’s not white are the drawer handles and the faucet and the little drops of bloody water that are sprinkled throughout the room. Everything in Josh’s house is white. Tyler wonders what Josh’s parents do for a living and then realizes that he doesn’t really care.

The clothes are not white. The clothes are a blink-182 t-shirt and a black hoodie and a pair of grey sweatpants. Tyler secretly loves of blink-182 but he can’t summon the energy to even care about blink-182, much less to put on the blink-182 shit, but he manages to sit up and watches as Josh leaves the room, grabbing a towel and shutting the door. Tyler peels off his clothes and just sits on the counter for a minute, slowly toweling himself off and pulling on the sweatpants so he can stop staring at the white lines crossing his stick thin thighs like the stripes on roads. He’s so warm now. He puts the hoodie on over the shirt, pulling up the hood because he feels like hiding.

He doesn’t want to look at his arms.

This is real and it is happening. He is Tyler Robert Joseph, his father has kicked him out of his house, he has punched Josh Dun in the face, he has tried to kill himself, he has thrown up in the sink and he never wants to see his family again. He is wearing Josh’s blink-182 shirt and he is sitting on Josh’s counter in Josh’s bathroom in Josh’s white house and he is alive because of Josh. And he still wishes he was dead.

This is real. This is happening.

He is crying and he can’t breathe.

And it is still happening even though he wishes with all of his heart that it isn’t.


	15. october 7, part vi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ignore the authors note please

**i think this chapter is gonna post at around the time i go back to school so i hope im not wallowing in 3x the crippling depression at that time. also, i am 1 meltdown away from doing a “tyler joseph in chapter 13”**

**_update: I HAVE MADE MYSELF SICK FROM ALL THE FUCKING NERVES, my first day was shitty and my crush is still with their s/o whos a total bitch who suicide-baited my friend, I hate everybody, my stomach feels like it’s being stretched out with cramps, maybe because I ate Taco Bell after not eating for 24 hours - but probably because I'm so nervous. I’m about to throw up, the sad thing is that I’ve joked about suicide to my parents all day and they don’t realise that I’m actually serious about wanting to kill myself???_ **

**_Also I took a 5-hour nap_ ** _(_ _I NEVER take naps, maybe once a year if that)_ **_after school ended, woke up at 9, and had to write 3 different 1-page letters about myself to my new teachers. SEND HELP. I fucked up on my 4-month clean streak and I’m overly triggered, I just want to die._ **

> **_Im so sorry for telling you all of this shit. I promise I'll stop oversharing eventually, but I'm going through shit and I can't tell my parents seriously so I have to tell u. Also updates will probably be slow because of school. I'm in such a bad place rn and all I can say is I hope ya'll are doing okay._ **
> 
> **__ **
> 
>  

* * *

 

 

**october 7, part vi**

After a while of staring at the white tiled floor, Tyler realizes that Josh has reappeared. He wipes his face off with the overly large sleeve on the hoodie, which smells like Josh. Something he can’t really put his finger on, but it’s probably some sort of cologne. It smells good. And he realizes he never wants to stop smelling that smell. It’s weird but he never wants to give up this hoodie. His tears make little marks on the fabric and he lets his hand drop back onto the counter.

Josh is barefoot now and he is wearing sweatpants too, but his shirt is for some band that Tyler’s never heard of before. He is holding a towel and he is wiping down the counter around Tyler. Then he pushes it around on the floor until all of the red water is gone. Instead of throwing it in the laundry bin, he throws it into the trash can.

 

* * *

 

 

Josh knows that he never wants to think about today ever again. That’s why he’s throwing everything that’s touched Tyler’s blood away. Including his own clothes, even though he hates to see that shirt go. But he knows every time he sees that shirt he’ll think, _oh, those little washed-out bloodstains are from the day that Tyler tried to commit suicide on the bell tower at Greene Park,_ and he’ll never think about it the same way. The trash can is full of towels and his clothes and all of the wrappers from the first aid stuff. So what if his parents ever find out about the towels, he couldn’t give two shits about them. He can’t even muster to give one shit about them.

God, he feels exhausted.

He ties off the bag in the trash and pulls it out of the can. He looks at Tyler for a second and sees the blank, horrible look on his face.

“Do you want Melanie?”

Tyler looks up suddenly. But it doesn’t feel like it’s his head moving, his head looking up. It doesn’t feel like it’s his body breathing and his eyes crying. It doesn’t feel like his head is nodding even though it clearly is. He feels like he’s trapped in a stranger’s body.

“I’ll text her,” he says, and it’s right then that he realizes, _again,_ that he left his phone at school. “Shit, can I borrow yours?”

“Ruined,” Tyler says quietly, remembering how he shucked off his phone case in the rain to retrieve the old pencil-sharpener blade from inside. His emergency blade. The phone and the razor blade are probably still up on the bell tower. He’s strangely indifferent about this.

“Shit. I’ll go call her from the house phone. Want to come with me?” Josh offers his hands out, probably to help Tyler down from the counter. As much as Tyler would love to grab them and never let go, he doesn’t want to seem completely useless so he just slides off of the counter and follows Josh into the kitchen like a dog, cradling his arm to his chest and feeling like he’s going to cry again.

Josh is glad he can recite Melanie’s number from memory as he dials it into the clunky old-fashioned house phone. He dimly remembers his family buying the dial phone because they thought it was charming and vintage, but the dusty white dial just makes it take longer to dial out her number. The handle/receiver/microphone thingy is heavy and awkward in his hand. God, he misses his cell phone already.

The phone picks up immediately. But it’s not Melanie, it’s Brendon and he’s babbling at the speed of sound.

“It’s Josh! His house phone!” he’s yelling, then he says, “Hey Josh! What’s so important that you’re calling from home. Oh!!! Did you, like, get into Mr. Way’s pants? Finally? Hey, y’know, I saw Frank Iero leaving Mr. Way’s classroom the other day, he looked like he’d just gotten fucked, and – ”

“Can you shut up, Brendon?” Josh snaps. “I need Melanie. Please give her the phone.”

Brendon sighs. There’s some background noise and then Melanie’s voice comes on over the speaker.

“Can you, like, leave school for me and come over?” Josh says. “Um, it’s Tyler. He wants you. Please?”

“Sure,” Melanie says, happy and completely oblivious as to why Tyler might want her. “I’ll be there in thirty, tops.”

“Can you get my phone for me? It should be in the office,” Josh asks, and she agrees. He hangs up and turns to look at Tyler, who’s hoisted himself up onto the island, slowly kicking his legs as they dangle off the counter. “Hey. Um, do you want food?”

Tyler shrugs, keeping his eyes positioned on the ground.

“I’m really sorry,” Josh says, stepping close to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know what for but I just feel really sorry.”

“D-don’t,” says Tyler in his creaky voice. Josh _realizes just how much_ he loves Tyler’s voice, how horrible he’d feel if he never heard it again. “It’s not your fault. None of this… is your fault.”

Josh keeps his mouth shut and stops, barely a foot away from Tyler.

“You should… like… st-top,” Tyler says. “You should g-get away from me b-because I’m like this. I’m s-self-d-destructive and I h-hate mys-self so m-much. I’m so s-sick, Josh. You sh-should leave m-me alone.”

“But that’s _okay,_ ” Josh says. “It’s _okay_ if you’re sick. It won’t make me like you any less. I still want to be your friend, Tyler, because I care about you.”

“N-no,” Tyler whispers, but the rest of his sentence is cut off because Josh is suddenly so close to him that he’s able wrap his arms around him. Tyler’s so thin against Josh’s chest. Josh is right between his knees and he can probably hear Tyler’s heart hammering.

Josh feels a hand against his chest. Pushing. Tyler is pushing him away.

Josh’s arms drop to his sides, defeated. He backs away and moves back to the phone to order from the Chinese place. He’s hungry and he hurts inside. Tyler pushed him away. Tyler hates himself and he’s sick.

And Josh should leave him alone.

Josh thinks about how thin Tyler is, how the clothes hang off him like sheets. He thinks of how small Tyler’s wrists are, how small his arms are, his long thin fingers, how his joints and bones stick out far. He wonders why Tyler’s like that and then he realizes that it’s none of his business.

He orders a lot of food because he’s really hungry, and Melanie’s coming over. His chest hurts even more when he thinks about how Tyler’s willing to talk to Melanie but not him. He paces through the kitchen and avoids making eye contact with Tyler, who looks like he’s doing the same. The Chinese delivery comes and goes before he knows it, and the house is filled with the smell of honey chicken and egg rolls. Melanie comes minutes later, and she grabs a container of egg rolls and drags Tyler into the sitting room, closing the door behind them.

Josh hears them talking but he doesn’t care what they’re saying. He focuses on eating the chicken and the rice and he wishes he understood Tyler.

 

* * *

 

 

When Melanie sees Tyler’s face she _knows,_ something inside of her just _knows,_ and she pulls him over to the couch and she just hugs him, tugging him onto her lap like he’s a little kid.

“Tyler,” she says, and her voice is low and broken; sad, and it sounds like she’s crying but Tyler can’t see her face because of how she’s holding him. He’s too exhausted to try and turn his head or anything. He just sits there and lets her hug him.

It’s okay with Melanie. But for some reason that he can’t explain, he doesn’t want Josh to touch him any more. Maybe it’s because Melanie’s a girl; Tyler thinks, but he realizes that he doesn’t really care whether a boy or a girl was hugging him right now. It must be something Josh did. He’s confused in his head, everything just feels _wrong_ except for Melanie’s arms around him, Melanie’s slow breathing and gentle voice, clogged by tears.

“Tyler, I’m so… _glad…_ that you’re alive right now,” she says, putting her hand in his hair and running her fingers through the damp brown strands. He closes his eyes and leans back into her, his back on her chest. He feels like it’s a puzzle and his piece fits perfectly into hers. They are friends. Real friends. This feels right. He realizes that if he’d have died earlier, he’d never have been able to sit here with her again. She’d never be able to run her fingers through her hair or share her music with him again, and that makes him sad to think about. Never having her paint his nails again, never hearing her angel voice, never doing her pigtails again.

Tyler thinks about how he wrote her name in his book on Friday, and he thinks about how really, she deserves a whole book for herself, not just a line on a page. He could fill an entire journal with her name, an entire _library_ of books, and it still wouldn’t express how much he cares about her. She deserves far more credit than he gives her. She’s never hurt him and she’s the nicest person that he knows. God, she deserves the entire world, but he can’t give it to her because he doesn’t know how. Instead he just leans his head into her shoulder and moves his good arm around her neck to hug her. His bandaged arm is limp in his lap, the white gauze hidden by his – Josh’s – hoodie.

“I love you,” he whispers to her, and he means it. Pure, unadulterated love. Platonic friend love that’s completely invincible to everything around it. “You’re m-my b-best friend-d.”

She squeezes him hard in her arms. “I love you too, Tyler. You’re like my brother. God, I care about you so much and I never, ever want you to try and leave again. Okay?”

Tyler nods into her shoulder, eyes glassy. He knows what she means by leave and he wonders how she knows about the carefully concealed line down his arm. Probably some sort of weird ESP intuition.

She reaches around him and retrieves the takeout box of egg rolls. “Want some egg rolls?” she asks, wiping a tear off her face and trying to smile. Tyler accepts the crispy roll and tries to eat it even though he’s not very hungry. It’s extremely hot and it burns his tongue, but he eats it anyways.

He scoots away but keeps his legs on her lap, and they sit there eating in silence and it feels like hours just melt away. Melanie makes small talk with him and he laughs and after a while, when the windows are getting darker and Josh is nowhere to be seen, somebody knocks on the door and then the doorbell goes off about a hundred times. Tyler’s guess is Brendon, and he’s right, because when Melanie gently pushes his legs off her lap and goes to open the door, the large-foreheaded boy bursts through, followed by Pete and Patrick.

“Tyler! You’re alive!” Brendon calls. Tyler winces a little and nods. “See, Joshy was making us worried. Hey.” As he passes by Tyler, he pats him on the head. Melanie sits back down next to Tyler, folding her legs under her body. He hears the rumble of their conversation, and eventually Josh slides back into the room, but Tyler’s eyes are falling shut and before he knows it, he’s asleep.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> edit (8/20, about like 2 months after i wrote this chapter!?!) you guys made me cry with all of your beautiful comments, thank you so much ♡ you are the best readers that any author could ever ask for! again just thanks for being here and leaving me such positive messages ♡♡♡♡♡

**hey if y’all are up for some great romantic happy music check out the postal service. i love all their freakin music. god damn it is great. this chapter is brought to u by the postal service. jesus almost every chapter has been lol**

**also this chapter is disgusting and cliché oh well sue me i just needed to write some good ol joshler**

* * *

 

**october 7, part vii**

* * *

 

 

Tyler wakes up to a girl’s shrill scream. It’s Ashley, who seems to have appeared in the time since he fell asleep. She’s holding a stick with a flaming marshmallow on the end. Tyler looks up and sees that the fireplace is on, and Brendon is toasting six marshmallows over it at once. Melanie’s kneeling by the flames and talking with Hayley, who’s giving her a back massage. Pete is sitting in Patrick’s lap, the latter wrapping his arms around Pete as the former toasts two sticks holding marshmallows. Josh is sitting with his back against the armrest of the couch, his legs stretched out in front of him. His phone is in one hand, a s’more is in the other. He’s laughing.

“Brendon, stop sending me eggplant emojis,” he says, “Also – ew, does everything have to be about sex with you?”

Brendon looks up from his phone and winks. Tyler leans over to grab the carefully folded blanket from the end of the couch and he covers himself. The room may be dominated by a fire, but it’s still so cold.

He feels the couch dip next to him. It’s Melanie. She offers him a stick with a browned marshmallow on the end, but his stomach gives a nasty curl at the sweet smell. He shakes his head, and she shrugs, eating it and tossing the stick to the side. She leans up against him and runs her fingers through his hair slowly.

He leans into the touch and looks out the window. It’s dark – _how long was he asleep?_ Apparently not long enough, because he still feels tired. He feels his eyes slipping shut again.

 

* * *

 

 

Josh waits until everyone else leaves – well, save for Melanie – to try to talk to Tyler again. Melanie’s off in the kitchen making a pot of tea for some reason. It’s close to midnight but she’s still going to drink a pot of tea.

Tyler’s been sitting on the couch and staring at the opposing wall for several minutes now. Josh noticed him waking up a while ago, but they haven’t exchanged any words yet. Josh thinks about how Tyler pushed him away earlier, the younger boy’s thin hand pushing at his chest. _You should leave me alone._ Maybe Josh shouldn’t try talking to him at all.

But the boy’s pull is irresistible, and he looks so small and needy, his back against the couch cushions and his knees folded to his chest; his hands clutching at the blanket to keep it secure around his chin. And his eyes, wide and innocent, staring straight ahead at the wall, unblinking.

Josh wonders what’s going on in his head, and then he thinks that he probably doesn’t want to know. Instead, he pretends to be scrolling through Snapchat, but he’s really only dedicating about twenty percent of his brain to the crappy video that Brendon posted on his story. (It’s him eating a banana in an unspeakably sexual way and laughing at the top of his lungs, even snorting out a chunk of liquified banana at some point and yelling “it came!”, even though nobody asked for the description of the god-awful video.)

Josh stares from over the screen as Melanie slowly walks into the sitting room, balancing two mugs of tea. She hands one to Tyler and keeps her hand securely around the other. She puts a hand through his hair and whispers something to him, and Josh’s never felt so jealous in his life before. Not even the time when he had a semi-crush on Pete and Pete started dating Patrick.

Why won’t Tyler let him be that close? Why does _Melanie_ get to hug him? Why does he _hate_ Josh so much? God. Josh distracts himself by viewing random classmates’ stories on his phone and hating every second. He wishes Tyler would let him hug him.

 

* * *

 

 

Tyler brings the tea to his lips. He’s never had green tea before, but this is pretty good.

“I’ve got to leave. Will you stay here with Josh until you can go home?”

Tyler hesitates.

“It’s okay. I’ll kick his ass if he hurts you, remember?” She finishes her mug and sets it on the side table. He nods slowly and she hugs him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah.” His voice is quiet as he hugs her back. He never wants to let go, but he reluctantly loosens his grip around her neck as she pulls away, petting his head and grabbing her backpack from the front door.

“Bye Josh!”

Josh waves at her as she leaves and stands up to go loot the kitchen for some leftover Chinese. “You want anything?” he asks Tyler, quietly, avoiding meeting his eyes. Tyler shakes his head quickly and burrows back into the blanket, slumping onto the couch.

“Go to one of the bedrooms if you’re tired,” Josh says, reemerging from the kitchen. It’s almost midnight but hey, this rice has a ninety percent chance of not being here in the morning, because Brendon left with promises of coming back tomorrow. “It’s okay, I don’t care.”

Tyler slowly stands up and wraps the blanket around his neck like a cape, wobbling down the hall to the room he stayed in last night. He’s so _tired,_ but he doesn’t want to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

 _God, you’re such a fucking failure, you couldn’t even go through with killing yourself,_ and the voice is back, haunting Tyler even though he’s under six blankets and he’s still cold inside. Even half a dozen blankets aren’t enough to keep away the voice.

_You’re a disappointment, Tyler, a failure. Nobody cares about you. You know, you did pack those razor blades when you came here. You can get up, Tyler, you can do it. I bet you can. All you have to do is get up and walk five steps. Then all of your dreams will come true._

_No,_ Tyler thinks back desperately. He has _Melanie_ and he doesn’t want to leave her. She doesn’t want him to leave either.

_Ha. You really think that pink-haired bimbo cares about you, Tyler? God, so naïve. You know, she’s got eyes on Ashley. She doesn’t give a single fuck about you._

_She does,_ I know it, _shut up,_ Tyler screams into his skull.

_Shut up? The words of a child. I’m much, much wiser than you, Tyler. I know everything. Nobody cares about you, not even your own mother. Your siblings don’t miss you and you don’t have any friends. I’m so much smarter. Give in to me, Tyler._

Tyler gives out a whine and shoves his hoodie paws over his ears in a poor attempt to block out the noise as the voice gets louder and louder.

 _Tyler, is there even anything good in this world to stick around for? Nobody loves you. Nobody wants anything to do with you. See? LISTEN TO ME. I am so much wiser that you. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS. That’s right, stand up,_ and Tyler feels himself standing up, _god,_ it’s like he’s in some sort of trance or something.

_No one here to help you now, Tyler. Just you and me. Nobody to come meddling with your attempt._

Meddling… meddling with his _attempt…_

 _That stupid boy won’t even hear us,_ and that launches Tyler from the trance faster than a bullet. _Stupid boy! The stupid boy is_ JOSH!

“J-josh! _Josh!”_ his voice is a desperate whine, slicing through the voice’s words. He can still hear it talking, oh god it won’t leave him alone and he needs Josh before it makes him go back into the trance and he has to touch those blades again.

“JOSH!”

There’s a quick knocking on the door. “Tyler? Tyler? What’s wrong?”

“ _Josh c-c-come in h-here r-right now h-h-help m-m-me!”_

“I can’t, the door is locked!”

Tyler’s rooted to the spot and he can’t move, can’t breathe, he can’t do anything and he’s hyperventilating and he’s falling to the floor and _god,_ the room is spinning. He can’t stand up so he _crawls_ to the door, and the voice is so loud that he feels like he’s going to go deaf. He reaches for the door handle and frantically turns the lock.

The door falls open and Josh runs in, nearly stepping on Tyler in the process. He falls to his knees and kneels over Tyler, curled on his side in fetal position and clutching at his injured wrist and _crying._

“No, Tyler, it’s okay, it’s okay, come here, it’s okay,” Josh says hysterically. He can’t see any blood but he’s so _scared_ because Tyler looks like he’s having some sort of panic attack. He sits and pulls Tyler onto his lap, and what freaks him out is that Tyler doesn’t struggle at all, he just _lets_ Josh hold him, unlike before where he pushed him away. Josh tightens his arms around the boy, pulling Tyler’s back against his chest. “It’s okay.”

“M-m-make it _s-stop,”_ Tyler whimpers, his hands now over his ears. Josh is acutely aware of how small Tyler’s body is through the hoodie as he holds him, making small hushing noises into Tyler’s ears.

They sit like that for several minutes, just Tyler on the floor between Josh’s legs, back-to-chest, with Josh’s arms around him. He loves being here far more than he should, because Josh’s arms are so grounding and his body is so warm. And he doesn’t let go, not even after Tyler’s breathing evens out and the voices fade away. Tyler feels Josh’s chin settling on his shoulder, his deep breaths, the little things he whispers into Tyler’s ear, and Tyler realizes that he was wrong to push Josh away because just like with Melanie, he doesn’t know what he’d do without him.

He’d be dead now and he’d never have been able to see Melanie again and he’d never have been able to experience this… _hug,_ which seemed like too much of a simple expression for the action, it was more as if Josh was an anchor and he was keeping Tyler rooted to the world. Because without Josh he’d just keep falling, falling, and now he realizes, he’s terrified of falling, and he doesn’t _want_ to fall anymore.

“Josh… I’m _s-sorry,”_ and now he’s crying, full out crying and it’s coming out like fucking Niagara Falls. He raises up the hoodie sleeve to wipe off his face and it smells like Josh. Everything smells like Josh. Josh tightens his hold on Tyler. “Oh my g-g-god, I’m s-so fucking-g sorry. I d-deserve to be d-dead right n- now, I really d-do.  I… I was s-such a h-horrible p-person t-to you.”

“Shhh, it’s okay, Tyler, I don’t even care, all I care about is that you’re alive right now.” Everything is cold. The room is cold. The floor is cold. The clothes Tyler is wearing are cold. Tyler is cold. Josh is the only warm thing in the entire world right now.

“N-no, I _p-punched_ you, a-and you d-didn’t do any-anything.”

“Tyler, it’s okay. I forgive you. No hard feelings.”

“B-but – ”

“No, I mean it, Tyler. I care about you. Why else do you think I ran after you when you left school and dragged you all the way back to my house? I genuinely want to get to know you and whatever happened is in the past now. Okay?”

Tyler sniffs, wiping his face before twisting on Josh’s lap to hug him. When he presses the side of his face to Josh’s chest, he can hear Josh’s heartbeat, loud and strong.

Josh is his anchor. He never wants to leave.

* * *

 

**ima wear my gay equality shirt from hot topic and my gay bracelet and my gay striped rainbow socks to school tomorrow and just _BROADCAST THE FUCKING GAY_ i feel particularly gay lately, maybe all the creepy bois will leave me alone **

 

**(true story ladies, when u wear tank tops to school,, and,,, like,,,, let the ladies out,,,,, if u get what im saying,,,, the bois will come out and harass u,,,,)**

 


	17. Chapter 17

  **9/1 im sick as a fucking dog and ive been home alone for the last 2 days… so my labor day (? i think that’s the monday holiday) weekend is gonna be like 5 days long instead of 3 lmao im avoiding SO MUCH homework rn im gonna be in for some fuckin SHITTY ASS homework on tuesday**

**october 7, part viii**

* * *

 

That night, Tyler ends up on a bed, lying barely two feet away from Josh, listening to him breathe quietly and staring at the ceiling. He takes comfort in the fact that Josh is so close to him, and he can feel the warmth radiating off of Josh from under the covers.

There is a giant skylight above them and Tyler can see the Milky Way **(did you read that as mikey way? i did too, u trash)** through it. The stars are so bright but Tyler can understand why Josh would want to sleep under a skylight. It’s so calming and beautiful.

Tyler wonders what it would be like to be lost in space. Space is a vacuum, or something like that – Tyler doesn’t really pay that much attention in Space-Science class – so there’d be no noise to bother him, no people to mock him. He’d be completely and totally alone.

However, he’d freeze to death if he didn’t immediately explode, he thinks, because he did in fact pay enough attention in Space-Science class to get that bit. Tyler racks his brain for why he’d explode in space without some sort of protection because he only remembers that _… pleasant_ … bit of the lesson and comes up blank. His D in Space-Science is probably justified. **(i actually got an a in that class last year but i cannot remember the reason for blowing up in space. either too much pressure or not enough. fml)**

Another thing that Tyler remembers is that his teacher kept telling them to watch the sky tonight, because it’s the Draconid meteor shower, or something like that. And sure enough, after several minutes of keeping his eyes trained on the sky through the skylight, a streak falls across the sky, bright and piercing. Tyler racks his brain again. Something about… the atmosphere or something. Yeah, the asteroid hit the atmosphere and all the friction made it like, explode or something.

God, he should really pay more attention in that class, because the sky – and space – is really so beautiful. Another meteor falls, and he wonders if he should make a wish – after all, that is a shooting star, and he’s kind of alone and it’s just so beautiful.

“Tyler? Are you awake?”

Tyler is snapped from his trance when Josh rolls closer to him. “You okay?”

“I’m, I’m watching the m-meteor shower.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember Mr. Rod telling us about that,” Josh mumbles sleepily, and Tyler feels a warm, heavy arm wrapping around his waist. He lets it stay there as Josh spoons up behind him, digging his elbow into the mattress so he can support his head with his free hand. “It’s so beautiful, isn’t it? The stars. The sky.”

Tyler remains silent as another meteor trails across the sky before fizzling out abruptly. Then he nods.

“Did you wish? I mean, only little kids do that, but still,” Josh says sheepishly. Tyler can’t really respond because he can feel Josh’s fingers touching the skin on his hips where the hoodie’s ridden up and all he can think about is how there’s little white and pink scars all the way up there too, because there’s scars everywhere on his body that he can reach. He wonders if Josh would be disgusted if he saw Tyler’s skin.

“I will,” he struggles to say. And he lays there with Josh against him and he feels complete. Josh’s warm chest, his fingers splayed on Tyler’s hip, his foot nudging Tyler’s. Tyler is hyperaware of all the spots where Josh is touching him.

He turns his attention to the sky and waits for another meteor to fall. A few moments later, one appears in the very center of the skylight, brighter than any of the others he’s seen so far.

He holds his breath and makes his wish, closing his eyes as he recites it in his head. Beside him, Josh does the same, holding Tyler tighter to his body.

They fall asleep like that.

 

* * *

 

 

**october 8, part i**

Josh’s phone alarm goes off at six AM, pulling the boys from their sleep abruptly. Josh reaches for it without disrupting Tyler and shuts it off. He doesn’t want to go to school and he’s sure Tyler won’t want to either. God, they could stay here forever and Josh would be happy.

“Josh? Was t-that your alarm?”

Josh silently curses in his head. He didn’t want to wake Tyler but oh well, it seems like the boy’s awake now. “Yeah.”

“Aren’t you g-going to s-school?”

“No, I don’t want to.”

Tyler rolls to face him, and Josh’s hand falls between them. “Me neither,” he says softly, his eyes fixed on Josh’s hand. The skylight is filtering dark early morning into the room. The sky is overcast. The air in the room is cold, the covers have slipped down to their waists. It would almost seem romantic… but as Josh’s eyes catch sight of Tyler’s arms, exposed when the sleeves of his hoodie were pulled up in the night, he realizes that it’s anything but romantic. God, he’s literally just a crutch for Tyler. Tyler is using him, Tyler rejected his offer of friendship – or even anything _beyond_ friendship – yesterday, and then proceeded to use him as a mental crutch.

But, Josh thinks, being used as a mental crutch is better than being _completely_ rejected. So he just sits up and stretches and says, “I think you should change those bandages,” and he’s completely fine with being Tyler’s mental crutch in that moment, because Tyler’s the literal image of innocence. “Do you want me to do it for you?”

Tyler’s tempted to tell him no, tell him that he’s wrapped himself up more times than he can count on his fingers, that he’s capable of doing it himself, but the promise of feeling Josh’s warm, gentle fingers again is too strong and he nods.

Once in the bathroom, he feels his face heating with embarrassment when he rolls up his sleeves and sees the deep red and purple slashes covering his arms. Some of them are faded and only a few of them are still scabbed, but they are all disgusting, and he feels upset when he looks at them. God, he doesn’t want to look at them. He turns his face away, feeling tears well up in his eyes when Josh starts unwinding the bandage from his arm.

“Are you okay?”

A pause. The air is cold and heavy, the light overhead is artificial on the plain white tiles.

“Tyler?”

“ _No,”_ hisses Tyler, suddenly angry, and he pulls his arm away from Josh, _Josh,_ who he told to stay away and somehow, he still wants to be nice to Tyler. Josh doesn’t need to see his arms. He realizes, he doesn’t _want_ Josh to see his arms, because they’re gross and he _hates_ them. He hates cutting, it makes him sick.

Josh shrugs, looking hurt, and leaves the room. Tyler changes the gauze himself, suddenly so angry at Josh that he can’t think. God, he wishes he could just _leave_ here, but he hasn’t got a family any more, and he has a strange suspicion that Melanie’s family would be less-than-welcoming to him. So he resorts to giving Josh the silent treatment, like a little boy.

Josh is completely confused when Tyler leaves the bathroom without saying a word, and continues to stay silent well into the day, even when Josh appears in the doorway with his phone cradled against his ear and the promise of any kind of pizza that Tyler could possibly want. Tyler is sinking into the couch in front of the TV and wishing it would just swallow him whole, it wouldn’t leave a body nor an explanation, so nobody would be able to feel sad or empty without him. No guilt.

Many boxes of pizza arrive at the doorstep and Tyler stays completely silent. His stomach is growling and he wants nothing more than to dive in and eat half a pizza, but it’s _Josh’s_ pizza, and he wants nothing to do with anything that Josh owns. He realizes that the couch he’s lying on could count as Josh’s, so when Josh leaves the room without the pizza – abandoning it with Tyler in hopes of getting him to eat – he rolls onto the floor with a soft _thump_ and just curls himself up there, breathing slowly and watching the random images flash on the TV. Not really watching, more like observing but not understanding.

Josh’s TV… Tyler resorts to staring at the wall, but there’s a light hanging there so he amends by staring at the high ceiling, where there’s nothing of Josh’s but an old cobweb and some cracks in the paint. He doesn’t feel guilty staring at the ceiling, and he’s not quite sure why he’s punishing himself like this, but it’s making him feel better. Calmer. Perhaps he’s angry at himself more than he is at Josh.

Tyler watches the cobweb on the ceiling start to sway as the AC kicks in. It’s cold here on the tiled floor, fucking _tiled floor,_ which feels like icy glass beneath him. He rolls over and sees a few skittles rolling around under the couch. That’s how strong the air conditioner is in here. It’s like being stuck in Antarctica. He looks back up at the ceiling and watches the cobweb drifting around, and he wonders what happened to the spider who made it. Probably smashed by a stray skittle.

It’s at least noon by now, if not later, but the room is dark and the shades are securely shut. Light is leaking in from the open doorway, but not much, seeing as Josh is the only one living in this several-story house and he’s probably halfway across it.

Tyler hears a meow and shortly after that, a large white cat appears in front of him, scratching at the hoodie he’s wearing with sharp claws. Tyler raises an arm to rub the cat, and it’s the nicest cat he’s ever met, because it doesn’t flinch away or scratch him. The cat melts against him, purring. A tiny space heater. Tyler lets it stay there, figuring that since the cat is a sentient being, or something like that, it’d go away if it wanted to. It stays against his chest, warm and soft and heavy. Tyler is reminded of hugging Melanie.

Melanie… he wishes he had his phone right now. He’d tell her about the shooting stars falling down in the sky and the Milky Way splattered like glitter on a murky black backdrop, the crescent moon an intricately carved ornament hanging in front of it all. Just a sliver, the craters barely visible. He’d tell her about the red scars on his arms and Josh’s slender fingers against his pale, bruised skin and Josh’s steady breathing and the strange feeling inside of him, the colorful skittles dotting the cat-fur and dust wasteland under the couch, the cobweb dancing across the high ceiling and how the big white cat just came and curled up on him and how he thought of her when it did.

All these things in the world and he wants to share them with somebody. He wishes he had his journal right now, he could write down _shooting stars_ under October 7th and look at this list of things he loves, _big cities, flowers,_ and _the person who took the notes off my locker –_ Josh, it was Josh, and here are Tyler’s thoughts again, a tangled cobweb in their own ways, but they always end up at the same place. Josh, Josh, Josh’s curly red hair and the ring in his nose and the way his rough fingertips feel against Tyler’s skin. Josh’s warm touch and the way he looks at Tyler with his eyes crinkled in the corners and a big, idiotic smile on his face.

Tyler can’t stop thinking about _Josh._

And in the kitchen, Josh can’t stop thinking about _Tyler._

* * *

 

**Sorry i have no idea whats wrong with me or why i keep makin tyler all emo and pushing josh away... anyways... hi yall**


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basically just a giant filler chapter im sorry

**october 8, part ii**

_josh_

_josh_

_josh_

**_what the fuck brendon? this better be good._ **

_joshhhhhh... i fuckin touched mr ways dick!!_

**_HIS DICK?? OH JEEZ_ **

_i mean. sort of.. secondhand dick touching. yknow._

**_second hand dick touching? what the fuck does that mean_ **

_frank iero fell over in the hallway after lunch, he was… COMING… out of mr ways classroom. yknow, his legs were fucked up (Peach Emoji) (‘Ok’ Hand Emoji) (Eggplant Emoji) (Dark Faced Full Moon Emoji) (Lenny Face)_

**_jesus Christ bren. youre such a perv_ **

_but yknow. you get my drift right. (Winking Emoji) that dude fucking. fell over. and i touched his hand._

_…_

_definitely some secondhand dick touching there, josh._

_josh?_

_…_

_josh are you alive?_

**_dude im just trying to process this information_ **

**_…_ **

**_brendon u touched mr ways dick_ **

**_CON FUCKING GRATS_ **

**_the first in our friend group_ **

_haha im A FUCKING BEAST_

**_calm the fuck down assnugget_ **

_assnugget?_

_…_

_shit i have to go._

**_farewell  breadbin_ **

_\-----_

Josh sets his phone down on the chilly countertop, fully aware of the cold seeping into his ass, right through his jeans. He can’t take the unpleasant sensation anymore so he hops off and grabs a family size pack of chips from the cabinet. Josh loves eating food purchased with the endless supply of money his parents left him with. Josh is a total pig when it comes to food, and his high metabolism doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.

He wonders if he should go check on Tyler. The boy is exhausted but the whole detachment this morning, that was pretty scary. Josh would be lying if he said he wasn’t worrying about the whole… suicide… thing. Tyler hasn’t left the TV room or really made any noise yet, but he could be doing _anything_ in there. What if he has more razor blades hidden somewhere?

Josh abandons the chips on the counter halfway through the process of opening them and quietly walks down the hall towards the TV room. He listens for signs of Tyler moving, snoring, or _anything,_ but becomes slightly worried when all he hears is the very quiet voices on a television. He speeds up and turns into the big doorway, coming face to face with an empty couch and two untouched boxes of ham-pineapple and pepperoni pizza. The air smells like pizza and Tyler is lying on the floor.

His first thought is to panic, but he sees how Tyler’s eyes are shut tight and his chest is steadily rising and falling. Josh’s white cat, Snowflake – named courtesy of his sister, if it was up to him all of the cats would be named shit like Shat in the Hat or Dildo **(fun fact, those are my friends cats names! lol)** – is curled up on top of Tyler. Josh can hear Snowflake’s loud purring over the TV, which he turns off. He debates whether to try and lift Tyler onto the couch. He could do it, Tyler’s so light.

 **(ok sorry that i keep putting these descriptions of them in the story i just like to make it seem like theyre. like. in love with each other and shit.)** Everything about Tyler is beautiful in a strange, haunting way, The way he holds himself, curling in on his thin and looking like the smallest of breezes could carry him away. His messy brown hair and enormous eyes like melted chocolate. Even the scars on his skin are beautiful. Josh could spend hours looking at Tyler because he’s just so _pretty_ and Tyler doesn’t even realize how he captivates Josh with even the smallest of movements, like how he wiggles under Snowflake and makes a little noise, still not waking.

Josh becomes acutely aware of how he is staring at Tyler and how Tyler is sleeping. _Creepy._ He decides that he’s going to try to lift Tyler onto the couch because it must be frozen hell to try and sleep on the icy tiled floor in this room. As soon as he tries lifting him, one of Tyler’s eyes open, probably more from Snowflake standing up and running away, yowling, than from Josh’s soft touch.

“J-Josh? What are you d-doing?” The childish silent treatment is forgotten, Tyler just wants to know why Josh keeps coming back to him after all the shit Tyler’s said to him. God, Tyler is such an _asshole,_ he doesn’t deserve Josh’s attention.

“I’m putting you on the couch, it’s probably horrible on the floor,” Josh tells him. Tyler protests weakly but he’s already being dumped on the couch, and before he knows it, Josh is tucking the blanket around his shoulders and patting him on the head.

Tyler feels so _useless,_ like all he’s done lately is sit around and sleep, but he doesn’t really have energy nor really the will to actually do anything, so he allows himself to shut his eyes and fall back asleep thinking of Josh and knowing he probably won’t wake up until the next day.

_\----_

_joshy joshy josh!!!!! guess whatttT?!?!!_

**_did you touch mr ways dick fr this time?_ **

_no_

_but i did touch frank iero again_

**_oh god brendon u perv. if he wasn’t already ruined by way he is now. god_ **

_hey he started it dude_

_that man is a whore tho_

**_does he do it well though (Winking Face)???_ **

_o yeah man. fuckin great_

**_fucking???_ **

_not on school campus u assnugget, just 2 nd and 3rd base _

**_your acting like a teenage girl with ur fucking bases bren what the hell does that even mean_ **

_its for me to know and u to find out (Winking Face)._

**_dude. bro. mr way is gonna be PISSED tho._ **

_haha no he and mr way aren’t even in a fuckin relationship. theyre just… fuckin._

**_oh my god brendon urie_ **

_that’s what he said_

**_shut the hell up i don’t want to see your face anymore_ **

_????_

_{image: brendon, a distinctly sexual smirk on his face.}_

**A/N: sorry it isn’t turning into a chat fic i just needed some filler to make the chapter longer**

**x x x x x x x i feel like hugging people so. hugs.**

**SH TW a PSA:  if you are getting into self harm, please don’t. I started cutting my thighs with a razor when I was 11 and in a fit of anger and depression I have cut my wrists, for the first time, twice in the last week. yes it feels good while you do it but only then, It’s not fun and it’s not good and its definitely not worth it to get a addicted to it like i am. you deserve so much better than this. if you absolutely have to sh, at least don’t do it on your wrists. it’s probably not healthy to wear long sleeves in 100 degree weather anyways.**

**anyways I just wanted to say that I love you all and that I hope you never start self harming and if you do already, I hope it gets better for you** **♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡**


	19. lmao guys im sorry!?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i couldve sworn that i updated this but apparently it didnt save or some shit. thanks @ the person who commented, or else i'd have never realised that. sorry. also to the person who inquired, i did not, in fact, kill myself, but i have cried a lot

**TIME FOR TYLER TO QUESTION HIS SEXUALITY!!!!! dun dun DDDUUUUUNNNN!**

**hint to my straight friends:::: DON’T CALL GAY RELATIONSHIPS YAOI OR YURI ITS SO ANNOYING. LIKE MY GAY ASS LOVES BEING CALLED GAY AS FUCK BUT U AINT GONNA FUCKING FETISHIZE ME OR _I WIL LSTAB U_**

**also theres this fucking smol adorable _person_ at my school and I wanna _hug their fucking guts out bc theyre so adorable_ but ive only ever seen them in the halls and this is getting real weird bc ive never spoken to them ?!?!?!? AND WHAT MAKES ME MAD IS THAT MY FRIEND IS ALSO ATTRACTED TO THEM?!?!  _and im just mad and idk why im getting jealous over a complete fucking STRANGER wholl never even wanna talk to me because i see them exactly once a day on the staircase and once in the hall at the end and literally nowhere else weve never even SPOKEN_**

 

* * *

 

october 9, part i

Tyler wakes up and is immediately aware of the shooting pain in his back. Shit. Sleeping on the couch overnight didn’t do anything in his favor. He sits up, rubbing his eyes because it’s so dark. He can’t find a clock but he’s pretty sure it’s morning. The sky is dark through the windows but his body is telling him it’s early morning.

His body is also telling him that he’s very hungry. He tries to recall when he last ate but he can only remember eating an egg roll the day before yesterday. No wonder he’s so skinny, he frequently forgets to eat. That or he’s too tired and upset to eat, like yesterday. He never _feels_ like eating.

He wraps the blanket around his shoulders and stands up, letting the hem drag along the floor as he makes his way through the dim house. It looks like Josh’s door is shut so he flicks on a small lamp in the kitchen, which provides enough light for him to raid the fridge for pizza. He hopes Josh doesn’t mind, because all he seems to be doing is taking from Josh.

He wants to leave. He wants to stop relying on Josh for things. But he’s too hungry to ignore the two boxes of pizza in the fridge and he takes a slice of each, stacking them on the counter. He sits on the barstool and swings his legs slowly as he chews through the first slice of pizza. He’s surprised to find pineapples on top of one of the slices, but he’s not complaining. It doesn’t taste as horrible as it sounds.

He’s halfway through the second slice when he sees Josh’s door opening and the boy walks down the hall towards the bathroom. He pauses in his steps, yawning. “Tyler?”

Tyler stays silent and still like a deer caught in the headlights, not daring to speak, the pizza hanging out of his mouth. He doesn’t want to talk to Josh right now. He doesn’t want Josh to get mad at him.

“Ugh, never mind,” Josh gives a frustrated groan and enters the bathroom, flicking on the light and closing the door. Tyler quickly swallows the rest of the pizza and wipes his hands on Josh’s old sweatpants. He really wants to shower but he doesn’t want to bother Josh, and he doesn’t have any more clothes.

He does end up showering later when Josh throws a towel and a pile of clothes at him and tells him to do it. The warm water is welcoming on his aching back, and the soap makes him smell like Josh. The bandages on his arms come off sopping wet and he throws them in the trash once he dries himself off. The cut’s healed a little, but it probably needs another few days with a bandage. He takes the gauze roll out of the drawer and winds it over his arm, trying hard to ignore the actual state of his arms.

To his dismay, Josh didn’t include another hoodie in the clothes he gave him, and the other hoodie is long lost in the land of the laundry chute. (If Josh’s enormous house wasn’t enough of a sign, Tyler is now reminded of how wealthy the older boy’s family must be – they have laundry chutes, for god’s sake.)

Tyler pulls on the shirt, which has tour dates for a band he’s never heard of before on the back. The jeans that Josh lends him are worn out and holey, Tyler’s favorite kind of pants. **(Let’s forget about the necessity of underwear, because I have no patience for sorting out how to make this Not Weird but still include the fact that Tyler wears men’s underwear, a topic that I do not know about, nor do I want to handle.)** He wants to go find a pair of socks but he’s unwilling to leave the room without finding some form of long sleeves to hide the bandage on his forearm and the red scars all over his arms.

He resorts to waiting until he knows Josh is in the kitchen to make a run for his backpack, which is currently in Josh’s room, slamming the door shut behind him and digging through it to find some socks. The only socks he has left are more mismatched colored socks. They look like girls’ socks. Tyler knows it’s just another thing that people will make fun of him over, but he is really beyond caring at this point. He wraps a blanket around his cold body and slides out into the hall to ask Josh for a hoodie.

Josh is in the kitchen, pushing the contents of two eggs around in a pan with a spatula. Tyler draws the blanket tight around his arms. “Josh?”

Josh looks surprised at Tyler’s voluntary speech. “Yeah?”

“Do you… um… c-can I have another hoodie?”

Josh nods. “You can go look in my closet, dude.” Tyler quickly turns around and heads back to Josh’s room, pulling open the closet door. There’s a lot of hoodies in there and he just takes the first plain one that he finds. It’s a faded purple-grey but he once again finds himself not caring. He thinks it actually looks kind of nice over the ill-fitting black skinny jeans, which are kind of baggy in weird places. Josh must be able to fucking crush watermelons with his thighs or something.  _Weird._

Tyler wraps himself up in the hoodie, appreciating how big it is on him. The air in the kitchen is warm and smells delicious. Josh is pouring himself a cup of coffee when Tyler walks in.

“Can I have some?” Tyler asks, stifling a yawn with the sleeve of his hoodie. Josh shrugs and takes a mug out of the cabinet, handing it to Tyler, who drinks his coffee black. Not because he’s a badass macho man, but because right now he feels so indifferent about things in his life that he can’t be bothered with adding sugar and shit. The coffee is strong and it leaves a funny feeling in his throat when he swallows, but he appreciates the bitter flavor.

The wind bites at his face when he and Josh leave for school. Once again Tyler doesn’t have any of his books or anything, they’re still in his locker. He wishes he had his phone at _least,_ the empty space in his pocket is a painful reminder of its absence, but the cut on his arm hurts more.

He pulls the hood over his face and draws a little closer to Josh. Just for wind-blocking purposes, obviously, but the warmth radiating off of him is an added plus.

 

* * *

 

 

As the day wears on, Tyler finds himself unable to focus. Halfway through second period, he finally snaps after one too many privileged, straight white popular kid tells another kid to, ever-so-eloquently, “KYS”. It’s not even that he’s really bothered by the fact that they’re laughing around suicide, he’s just tired of hearing them talk. He writes himself a pass and pushes through the hall doors, seeking fresh air.

Fresh air, as he finds out, is on the gym roof, accessible through an insanely tall ladder which is bolted against the side of the building for some unknown reason. He can see the entire school from up here, at least thirty feet off the ground. An air conditioning system whirs across the rooftop, just loud enough to impair his hearing a bit, but not enough to really bother him.

“Nice and quiet up here, isn’t it?”

Tyler hears the voice, soft over the air conditioner, and tears his gaze away from the air conditioning unit and to the owner of the voice. A girl, previously unnoticed, is sitting against the side of the flat roof, her legs hanging off the side. She’s swinging them in between drags of a cigarette.

“Best place to come for skipping. You can see the sky up here. No trees.”

Tyler’s a little worried about how nonchalant she is about dangling thirty feet off the ground – thirty feet away from her death – but he decides it won’t hurt to sit next to her, and when he does, he finally gets a good look at her. Her bright blue eyes are tinged with an unreadable expression, something between sadness and insanity. Her hair is the pale, damaged white-blond that comes from bleaching hair too much, the roots are a much darker, contrasting color. Streaks of washed-out purple are still visible. Her hair reaches her waist, a slightly greasy and unkempt mane of otherwise straight hair.

“What’re you doing up here?” she asks, taking another drag off the cigarette and looking sideways at him. Her eyes are really pretty, but the whites are strangely red, almost as if she cries a lot. He shrugs, staring at the grassy land, yards beneath his feet. Her head is still tilted up and she’s staring at the sky, tracing the overcast clouds with her bright eyes.

“I guess you haven’t heard about me,” she says, raising an arm to brush her hair back. Tyler’s eye twitches to see the movement. _Oh._ Her arms look like his, and she’s not even wearing long sleeves to cover them. The scars are even darker in the cold air, or maybe hers are just deeper than his.

She smells like flowers. Some kind of flower, sweet and pretty. The Converse on her feet are ratty as they hit the building with every swing of her legs.

“What?” he asks, catching sight of a scar on the side of her face that becomes hidden when she scrapes her hair back again. She has a crooked, all-knowing smile that she flashes at him when he asks.

“You must be the only one,” she says simply, grinding the cigarette onto the roof and tossing it down to the ground. Then she reaches down into her low-cut shirt and retrieves a lighter from… well, wherever the lighter was hiding, Tyler doesn’t really know much about… secret pockets inside of girls’ shirts. She flicks it and lights another cigarette, bringing it to her lips. “I’m a little messed up, hmmm?”

She gives a shaky laugh and puts a hand on his knee. Her fingers are cold against his exposed skin. “I’d stay away from me if I were you,” she says, and her breath smells like cigarettes and something that Tyler can’t put his finger on. Before he can react, she’s standing up. Then she’s gone.

 

* * *

 

During lunch, Tyler and Melanie climb an oak tree to talk about the segment on Edgar Allen Poe that he missed in English on Monday and Tuesday. Melanie has the same teacher for sixth period, so she has all the notes that he needs.

Halfway through _The Raven,_ Tyler finds his mind wandering and he leans back in the giant branch. He can’t stop thinking about being on the roof of the gym, the breeze flowing past him, the hum of the air conditioning unit, and that _girl._ The girl with bleached hair who had scars and bruises and smelled like flowers, who almost outright told him to stay away from her.

“Hey, Mel?”

“Mm?” She puts down the packet onto her lap, looking up at him. “What’s up, Ty?”

“Sorry… I-I just…” he puts his thoughts together, struggling for words. “There was this g-girl, on the roof, in second p-period. She was smoking and it looked like she was c-crying, and – and she had scars like me, Mel,” the words are coming out too fast now, he bites his lip and hangs his head.

“Why were you on the roof in second period?” is all she has to say. Tyler shrugs.

“I was tired of being in class.”

“So, the girl?”

“She was really pale, and her hair was bleached out… there was purple…” Tyler feels his face going red and he doesn’t know why, but all he can remember is the feeling of her hand against his skin, the phantom pressure of her fingers on his knee. He’s never felt like that about a girl before and it’s _confusing_ him. “She told me to stay away from her,” he mumbles.

Melanie’s jaw falls open. “Oh my god, Tyler, you really do need to stay away from her, she’s _crazy._ ”

“Who is she?” Tyler presses.

“That’s Jenna Black,” Melanie says. “Please, just forget about her. We’re gonna finish this poem now.”

* * *

 

**Sorry, I don’t really know what Jenna looks like, and I’m not a Jenna hater, but let’s be honest, there’s no way that a ‘Stereotypical High School AU Fanfic Cheerleader Jenna’ is gonna fall in love with Tyler, and there’s no way he’s gonna fall in love with her, so she’s gotta be somewhat fucked up…. eh… majorly fucked up….**

* * *

 

**PLEASE TELL ME IF MY AUTHORS NOTES ARE ANNOYING CAUSE HONESTLY IM WORRIED YA'LL HATE ME BC OF THE NOTES?!??!?! like i used to write maximum ride (ew ik) fanfiction  and i wrote long-ass authors notes for every chapter and everyone loved me but idk if yall like me cause ur a tough crowd... jk ;) but ill try to cut down on the lengths of them its just that i dont have anyone to talk to lmaooooo**


	20. omg sorry!!! geez

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I FORGOT TO UPDATE AGAIN IM SO SORRY GUYS LMAOOOOOO

**october 9, part ii**

* * *

 

 

As it turns out, Jenna Black is on the roof again at the end of the day, smoking another cigarette and humming and staring at the sky again. Tyler’s come up here before and never seen her, but it seems like she’s permanently fixed to the roof, now always here.

“I told you to stay away,” she says with a dry little laugh. When she sees the look on his face, she stops, and rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you, I’m just…” she pauses, “Not a good friend.”

“My friend said to stay away from you, too,” Tyler admits, sinking down next to her. She is strikingly similar to him, thin and pale, shaky, nervous, unpopular. She hands him a cigarette, and he holds it in his palm, not really knowing what to do with it.

“So you really haven’t heard about me, then?” she says, a sad look in her eyes. He shakes his head, confused, and she offers him the lighter and shows him how to take a drag.

He immediately starts coughing, doubled over on the rooftop and scared of falling off. He scoots back a little and she puts a hand on his back, rubbing at it comfortingly and laughing, making him feel indignant.

“Dude, you don’t smoke, do you?” she says, her eyes lighting up as she continues to giggle. He coughs in return, glaring at her. He passes the cigarette back at her, hating the feeling in his lungs from inhaling the disgusting smoke. He coughs again.

“Here, let me help you,” she puts out the cigarette and leans closer to him, and before Tyler can even _blink,_ she’s leaned in and touched her lips to his, and she tastes like smoke and something definitely sweet, her hands are on either side of him and she’s so much shorter than him, he has to lean down to kiss her back. And that’s the weird thing, he’s _kissing her back,_ he’s kissing her back and she’s a complete stranger.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says as soon as he pulls away, gasping. She was leading the kiss – he has no experience kissing people – and he already misses the feeling, but this feels _wrong._ “I have to go.”

And he takes the ladder two rungs at a time, running as fast as he can back to Josh’s house.

 

* * *

 

 

Patrick is in an apron, pushing black beans around in a pot. Pete is next to him, managing a pan of beef and keeping an eye on the rice. Josh is chopping lettuce, Melanie is rooting around in the fridge for burritos and sour cream. Hayley is DJing the music and Ashley is basically just grinding against her whenever the opportunity arises. Brendon is passed out in a chair and Tyler has been given the task of shredding cheese with a cheese grater.

Apparently, Josh and his friends make their own burritos every Wednesday, and Tyler feels honored to be taking Brendon’s position shredding cheese. However, he’s going to take this gathering as an opportunity to get some information on the Jenna girl. _Jenna, who he kissed._

Tyler’s been convinced that he’ll never see any attraction towards women for… for… ever since he can remember, honestly. He’s _never_ fallen in love with a girl before, and he’s not sure he has yet – this isn’t _love,_ just a mutual attraction and the acknowledgement that she’s really pretty and she wants to kiss him.

He’s so confused. Maybe he should ask Melanie, she’s a lot more popular at school than he is so chances are she has more experience with relationships. He wonders if she’s ever dated a guy, even though she’s a lesbian. Maybe she had a time where she wanted to experience a guy.

He’s drawn from his thoughts when Josh unceremoniously shoves everything off the enormous dining table in the adjoining dining room, flinging piles of homework and key rings into the corner. In seconds, the table is covered with bowls of beans, rice, beef, and burrito toppings. Tyler carries over the cheese, tentatively placing it between the guacamole packets and the sour cream. He waits until everyone has food to gravitate towards Melanie, who is enjoying her burrito in the company of Hayley and Ashley. Tyler’s a little intimidated by the three of them together, all with long, carefully-dyed hair.

“Hey Tyler,” she calls, putting her burrito down and patting the place next to her. Tyler hops up and puts his plate on his lap, swinging his legs. He’s painfully reminded of the kiss earlier.

“Mel, can we talk?”

“Sure,” she says, taking another bite of the burrito. Tyler looks nervously at Ashley and Hayley. Ashley’s sitting on Hayley’s lap, and Hayley is feeding her a burrito. “Oh, don’t worry about them, they’re not paying attention,” says Melanie, rolling her eyes.

Tyler takes a breath. “Um… Melanie… I know you’re gay, b-but have you ever, like… um…. d-dated a guy? Cause… um… I think I like this girl, even though I’m… gay…”

Melanie waits for him to finish, contemplating her answer. “I mean, I experimented with some guys in middle school, but I never _liked_ any of them. Like I said, an experiment. And dude, if you think you like a girl, it’s fine, it doesn’t make you… _not gay._ Or less gay. You could be, like, bi, or pan, or something, and that’s still plenty gay.”

“I k-kissed a girl today,” he whispers, staring at his sock feet. Melanie is wearing knitted thigh-highs under her skirt, and he’s honestly kind of jealous that he can’t get away with wearing that sort of shit, because they look really comfortable.

“Oh… who was it? Was she good? _Where?_ ”

Tyler doesn’t want to tell her, she might get mad. Ugh. He does anyways. “After s-school… on the gym roof. Jenna Black.”

“Wait, you kissed _Jenna Black?_ What? _Tyler!”_

Melanie’s shriek disrupts Hayley and Ashley’s makeout session, and they pull apart. “Jenna _Black?_ ” Ashley asks, looking freaked out. “What happened with her?”

“Tyler kissed her today. Tyler kissed _Jenna Black_ ,” Melanie says, visibly freaking out. “Dude, dude, Jesus _Christ,_ you kissed Jenna Black. Oh god, this is bad.”

“WHY?”

Tyler’s scream causes them to snap out of it. Only _then_ they decide to explain.

 

* * *

 

 

Jenna Black, it turns out, is fucked up in many more ways than one. The gossip surrounding her name is plentiful. For one, her father abandoned her family before she got to junior high, leaving them nearly bankrupt and unable to support themselves. Her mother is apparently a well-known prostitute and her twin brother tried to rob a convenience store when he realized he didn’t have enough money to buy a can of Monster. (He’s in juvenile detention now and won’t get out for a long time.)

Jenna Black, Tyler is told, started smoking when she was eleven, had her first beer in sixth grade, and was rolling joints by eighth. Hard liquor in ninth. Jenna Black has dated half of the male population in the school, desperate for a steady male influence in her life, but they always end up breaking up with her because she’s too clingy and needy. Rumor has it that she’ll get on her knees for anyone.

Jenna Black is crazy. Jenna Black went missing twice, once during eighth grade, once during tenth grade, both times for attempted suicide. She’s spent months in recovery and nothing seems to help. Jenna Black is obsessed with the sky, Jenna Black lost her virginity at nine, Jenna Black only wants Tyler because she craves attention, and she will date anyone just to be able to hold them and let them use her. Jenna Black dyes her own hair and cuts herself in-between classes. Jenna Black was in a relationship with a seventeen-year-old boy when she was twelve. Jenna Black is anorexic, or maybe it was bulimic, or maybe both – she purges in toilets after lunch.

“I heard her once,” says Hayley, and Tyler feels bad for asking now. He wonders how many of the things he’s told are true, and how many are exaggerated. How many are outright lies. He thinks back to the flowery, smoky girl from earlier, with her red-tinged eyes and her long fingers holding cigarettes. How she stared at the sky and swung her legs and seemed small enough to disappear. How was she so beautiful and so broken at the same time?

Maybe there’s a lot of shit wrong with her, but he’s just as messed up. And if he’s supposed to be repulsed by her, why does he still feel so _differently_?

“I would stay away from her,” says Ashley. “I, um, I dated her once, and all she wanted was sex. She rushed the relationship so fucking fast. And she was one of those weirdos who gets off on being treated like shit. Wanted me to, like, fuckin’ yell at her and shit.”

Tyler feels his heart dropping as his friends continue to talk bad about her.

He’s so _confused_ now.

“Hey, guys!”

The four of them look up at Josh, who’s appeared in the giant, arched doorway that leads into the dining room. “Party here on Friday night? Pete’s bringing the good shit and I’m gonna invite some other juniors.”

The girls erupt in a chorus of cheering, and suddenly, Jenna Black is forgotten to them, and Tyler’s just left there with that weird, upset feeling in his stomach as the rest of the group filters back into the kitchen, putting food away and bickering over who’ll bring what.

* * *

 

**go check out my other fic pls**

 


	21. i swear im not giving up on this fic i just need a bit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hi guys :0
> 
> i promise i'll keep trying to write for y'all

**because of melanie martinez, i don’t know if i can continue to write this fic as it is, and i may have to scrap it and start over again if i have time. i probably have another 20,000+ words in this story in which she is portrayed in a very positive light via Tyler and i don’t think i can bear continuing, with knowing… y’know.. and… yeah. melanie martinez is a rapist until proven otherwise and there is no way that i support her.**

**also this fic might not get updated for a while because in my life, a lot of shit just hit a very angry fucking fan. my mental health is spiraling so fast, my ed is becoming unmanageable, my depression is never leaving me like it did before. im a fucking mess, i get 2 hours of sleep a night, and im so anxious all the time. and now my parents know about more stuff i’ve never told them (the ed and more lingering suicidal thoughts…) because i exploded at my mom, so now im scared and she’s giving me the silent treatment and i don’t want my dad to come home, they’re going to make me go to a therapist and they’re going to yell at me and tell me im ungrateful and then pretend to care for a day, i don’t think i can handle being alone with them for 3 weeks on Christmas break. there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. none.**

**i'm sorry if i worry you, i just need somewhere to vent. don't feel pressured to leave comments or anything.**

**love you!**

**(sorry that this isn't an update...)**

**xx x x lucy x x x x x x xxxxx (hugs lol)**


	22. idek more guys im sorry ive lost track

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hello dysphoria my old friend! i want to ask for a binder for christmas but oml i dont know how because my dad is a transphobe (THERE ARE ONLY TWO FUCKING GENDERS!!11!221!13!1!) and hes also stuck to my mum like glue so idk how to catch her alone

**october 11 (friday – we skipped thursday lol)**

**this was cringey af to read & write oh well lolllll**

* * *

 

 

School, as it turns out, is weirdly becoming a sort of safe space for Tyler. In most of his classes, he does not know anyone. And for the most part, they are leaving him alone. (Rumor has it that he’s hanging out with Josh Dun’s friends now, and Josh Dun’s never lost a fight in his life.) Nobody talks to him, he only sees his friends during lunch, and Josh is minding his own business in first and seventh period. He hasn’t seen his parents since Friday and he doesn’t ever want to see them again.

However, his safe space is invaded by his name coming in over the intercom _again_ on Friday, in first period when Mr. Way is preaching about how great drawing tablets are. Josh stops talking to the girl next to him about tonight’s party and gives him a funny look. Tyler sighs and makes his way back to the office. It’s probably about running out last time he was there. God, they’re probably pissed at him in the office. _Stupid Tyler Joseph, keeps running out of here crying every time we try to talk to him. Crybaby._

However, he’s not met by a disapproving guidance counselor once he’s directed to the conference room. He’s met by his _parents,_ and they look more pissed than anyone in the office could possibly be. His father looks ready to burst, and there’s a crazy look in his eyes like he’s just _snapped._ His mother looks frightened. Chris stands up as soon as Tyler appears in the doorway, and the guidance counselor quickly tries to get him to sit down.

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” roars his father. Tyler winces and backs away. The guidance counselor is nowhere to be seen now, having fled the room and shut the door.

“You _kicked me out_ ,” he mumbles, staring at the floor.

“Are you _backtalking_ to me?” asks Chris, glaring at his _useless, faggot_ son _._ “Your mother called you a hundred times. Why didn’t you _answer?_ Is there something _wrong_ with you?”

“It’s true,” his mother cuts in. “I was very worried, Tyler, why didn’t you answer? Where have you _been_ this last week?”

“My phone is broken, and I was at a friend’s,” Tyler mutters, still glaring at his shoes.

“Your phone is _broken_? Why? What did you do to it? _Ungrateful – ”_

“Well, I mean, it might not be broken, it’s just that I left it on the bell tower in Greene Park after I tried to jump off it on Monday. After that I took an old pencil sharpener blade out of the case and I tried to slit my wrists. It’s probably still up there,” and the way he manages to say it is so _bland_ and _indifferent,_ and when he looks up his father is still angry and his mother has a disgusted look on her face.

“That’s it, we’re leaving. Keep staying at your friend’s house, you’re not welcome back home,” and Tyler drops his head onto the conference table and when he picks it up again his parents are gone and there’s nobody around. So he sneaks out the back door of the office and he’s going back up the ladder to the gym because he wants to see Jenna, no matter what anyone else says about her he _still_ wants to see her.

“Missed you yesterday,” she says from around a cigarette and Tyler gives a little shaky laugh, trying to ignore the fact that the reason he wasn’t here yesterday was because of all the things his friends said on Wednesday. He sits next to her and as soon as he turns to face her, her mouth is on his and she has crawled over until she’s on his lap.

She moans in his mouth and the moan goes right to Tyler’s dick. She notices and smirks, moving her hand down –

“Wait,” says Tyler, completely unprepared for whatever she’s about to do. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s a possibly gay, possibly not gay, sixteen-year-old virgin who’s never had a boyfriend before – much less a girlfriend. She frowns but backs off a little. “Not yet,” he says.

She shrugs, grins and comes back to kiss him again, dominating in the kiss. Her tongue demands entrance in his mouth and he lets it in, not really sure what’s happening but not _hating_ the feeling. **(asfdfgjkh sorry guys i’m a thirteen year old gay kid who’s never kissed anyone so im real bad at this shit.) (scratch that, i wrote this 3-5 months ago and im 14 and still gay and ive still never kissed anyone)**

They break apart, breathless, and Tyler says, “There’s a party at Josh Dun’s house tonight,” and he has _no idea_ what he’s even doing but he wants her to be there, and she smirks again.

“I’ll be there.”

 

* * *

 

 

There are countless bottles of alcohol in a cluster on the bar. Josh is grinning as he stacks Solo cups next to them. Ashley is putting beer after beer into the fridge. Hayley’s reconnected her phone to the house speaker system, and Pete, Brendon, and Patrick are off buying shitty food to bring back. Tyler is helping Melanie shove furniture into the guest room to clear out a giant space in the sitting room. Apparently, Josh has giant parties here a lot and his friends move like clockwork when it comes to the pre-party organization.

Tyler and Melanie finish moving the furniture just as the three boys reappear, holding shopping bags and laughing. Brendon tosses bags of chips onto the table and Pete and Patrick unload a bag of Taco Bell onto the bar. Everyone dives into the Taco Bell. Pete cracks open a beer and it seems like everyone but Tyler suddenly has one. Tyler’s never drank before and he’s afraid of getting drunk. No one comments on his lack of a drink, instead they open one of the bottles on the counter and start passing it around.

The door swings open and a few people come in. The lights go down and the music turns up. More people come in. Jenna isn’t here and Tyler doesn’t know if he wants her here, because all they’re doing is drinking and dancing, and Tyler isn’t really a drinking-dancing person. Instead, he stands awkwardly by the chips and watches as already-drunk teens show up at the door, carrying bottles and giggling.

The house is quickly full, and Melanie sidles up next to Tyler with a Solo cup in her hand.

“Drink some,” she says, handing it to him, and he takes a swig without looking at what’s in it, almost choking on the poisonous flavor. She walks away without taking it back, so he has no choice but to finish whatever is in the cup. It burns his throat and he hates the taste, but he figures he’ll be less awkward if he’s at least a little drunk.

“Hey, Tyler! Come join us!” Brendon waves him over to the table, where all the chips have been shoved off and Pete is setting up some cups. _Beer pong,_ Tyler realizes, as soon as Brendon takes out a ping-pong ball. They’re against a girl and two other guys, who are failing miserably, but they still manage to throw the ball into the closest cup. Brendon grabs it and passes it around. Tyler frowns at the taste of the beer but passes it to Pete, who downs it in one swallow and tosses the cup on the floor.

Music pounds in Tyler’s ears as he tries to throw the ping-pong ball into the other team’s cup. It lands and they pass it around. The girl on their team tries to distract him by adjusting her boobs but he’s impervious to her attempts.

_Where’s Jenna?_

The house already smells like sweat. Smoke is hanging in the air and it makes it hard to breathe. The other team misses and after a few more cups of beer, Tyler finds himself losing interest, so he gladly lets Patrick join when he reappears.

People are playing spin the bottle. Two girls are shrieking and eating off different ends of a stick of Pocky. Tyler wanders off past the dancing people and aimlessly grabs a beer from the fridge, not planning on drinking it but just wanting to fit in. He’s struggling to pull off the top when _she_ appears in the kitchen.

“I take it you don’t drink a lot,” and she has a red cup in her hand already, she smells like smoke and she’s wearing cutoff shorts and a tank top now, her scars in plain view and her hair in a bun on the back of her head. Tyler can’t stop thinking that she’s pretty, and he _knows_ that he’s getting drunk because that’s what this feeling _must_ be.

She takes the beer from his hand and uses the thing on the bar to pop off the lid with a _hiss. Oh._ Tyler feels stupid, beer isn’t like soda where you just twist off the metal cap. She grabs his arm, intertwining their fingers – _Tyler’s chest flutters –_ and leads him out the back door, past the porch and onto the hammock in the trees in Josh’s yard.

Jenna pulls him down to lay next to her in the wide hammock, and he tumbles down, his body smacking hers a little in the process. She giggles and her breath smells like alcohol. “Look at the sky,” she tells him, and he lets his gaze fall off her face and turn up to the sky, where a thousand, no, a _million_ stars are shining down at him. She’s still holding his hand and Tyler has this _absurd_ thought that their cuts are touching, right where the inside of his left wrist touches her right. His right hand is hanging out of the hammock to keep his beer upright, and she is mirroring his actions.

He can still hear the music inside from here, mostly just the pounding bass, but it feels so lonely out here, like they’re the only people left on the earth. Her cold bare legs are pressed against his as they tangle there in the hammock.

“Have some of this,” and she hands him the red cup, he swigs half of it. It doesn’t taste half bad and she giggles again, telling him to drink the rest. When he does, he flings it across the yard. They take turns sipping his beer, and the little kid in Tyler whispers _indirect kiss_ each time he sips off of the bottle. His stomach hurts from all the alcohol and he’s _certainly_ drunk by now. He’s never drank in his life, and he’s a twig, so the alcohol is definitely in his body now.

“You’re so hot,” he clumsily tells her, tossing the empty bottle so it joins the cup in the grass. He rolls over so he’s facing her, and she grabs his face and pulls him closer, their lips meeting quickly. The kiss is sloppy and it tastes like beer. It’s far from the kiss earlier, but Jenna seems happy, threading her hands through his hair and moving to kiss his neck.

Tyler shivers at the feeling but doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he moves them down to her waist, where her shirt’s ridden up and exposed her hips. The skin there is soft and he skims his palms down it until he feels the fabric of her bra under his fingertips. She gives a short gasp and kisses her way back over to his mouth, breathing laboriously as she continues the kiss from earlier. Tyler responds with vigor, fighting her tongue for dominance.

The sober part of him is screaming _this is wrong!_ , but the drunk part of his is replying _I like this, this is good, let’s keep doing this,_ because their bodies are warm next to each other in the dark, cold October night, and she keeps making that _gasp_ every time he moves his hands on her milky skin. It’s good because he’s never been closer to anyone and he _likes_ this sort of intimacy.

She _moans_ against him and, like before, the noise triggers something deep inside of him and she smiles all-knowingly. “You like that,” she says, moving away from him for a split second, and he responds by pulling her back.

“Wait, let’s go… _inside,”_ she says, mischievously, and Tyler’s drunk mind is screaming, _yes, yes, yes!_

He grins back at her and lets her lead him back into Josh’s house.

* * *

 

**UH OH, MY BABY IS????? _SEXING???_**


	23. I AM SO SORRY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I run away a lot, and I hate it.

This story is going to be on “hiatus” until further notice. Before you panic, that just means I’ve stopped writing it, but I do have many more chapters to post.

I am extremely sorry about this. I feel burned out on my writing, even though I have you guys to cheer me on, my beautiful readers. My mental health is taking a nosedive lately and my parents are trying to find me a therapist, so hopefully I will be feeling better eventually. I feel empty and I’m losing interest in basically everything I love, including my friends, favorite bands, and hobbies like writing. I feel burned out on basically everything in my life, which is why i’m trying to seek help before I do something i’ll regret.

 I feel like history is repeating myself; back when I was 11, I wrote a massively popular, 80,000 word Maximum Ride fanfiction, which also had beautiful readers and wonderful support. However, I drew it out far too long, writing an entire 65,000 word first book in which the characters didn’t so much as kiss. (I have a thing for slow burns, okay?) I started writing the 15,000 words of a sequel but deleted both when I turned 13, attempted to rewrite it, and abandoned it. (I still think it’s possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever written. There are cringey bits mixed in, but it’s still beautiful. Oh well.)

I really don’t want this to happen to this fic! I love this story and I love you guys, and I feel like abandoning this work would not benefit anybody. So, I will continue to post the chapters that I have on my computer (at least 10 more I believe). I plan on attempting to rewrite this over summer break, when I no longer have the stress and anxiety caused by school and the people in it. Also, hopefully, by then I will have gotten into a better place mentally and physically.

I will actually try to write a plot out first, which has been my downfall for virtually every work I’ve ever written! I hope that this fic will never be left unfinished and belong to an orphaned account because I really do want to finish.

I love you guys so much, every time you leave a review it makes me smile. I try to respond to them but I’m a shitty person so I usually forget. I’m not ignoring you, I love you but I simply suck! Lol.

I’ll see you around soon, hopefully.

x x x

lucy

 

(Side note: another thing I thought about  - which also has affected me in the past from the MR fics - is that the fandom is dying. Not just 21p but also the emo trinity, which just depresses me beyond belief. It's really burning me out. Hopefully the boys will release their album soon and with fob/panic's new stuff, we'll be booming again... of course, MCR (easily my favorite fandom) will never recover but I think i've accepted that lol.)


	24. MCR IS GOING ON TOUR AGAIN?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POSSIBLY? I LOOKED IT UP AND OUTCOME IS DISMAL BUT THERE'S STILL HOPE!

 

> **_ALERT ALERT A-FUCKING-LERT!!! HAVE U HEARD ABOUT MCR!??!? THEY RELEASED NEW SHIT ON THEIR YOUTUBE AND GERARD IS GETTING IN SHAPE TO “WORK ON MUSIC”!!!! THIS IS NOT A FUCKING DRILL! MCR IS STIRRING FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL, I REPEAT, MCR MAY BE DOING A COMEBACK TOUR WHICH HASN’T BEEN CONFIRMED YET BUT I STILL HAVE MY HOPES UP, AND IM CRYING INTO THE FRANK IERO PILLOWCASE THAT I JUST RECEIVED! OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WASNT GONNA POST THIS BECAUSE I STARTED CRYING WHEN I TRIED TO LAST NIGHT , BUT FUCK DO YALL DESERVE IT BECAUSE HOLY SHIT IM JUST GOING THROUGH SO MANY EMOTIONS RN, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT MY VERY-TAKEN CRUSH AND FELLOW EMO_** WANTS TO GO TO AN MCR SHOW WITH ME AND ONLY ME  ** _AND IM JUST YELLLLLLINGGGGGGGGGGGG_**

**_HE IS SEXING!!! oh no!?_ **

Josh and Melanie are dancing together, completely drunk, when they see no one other than Jenna Black tugging Tyler along behind her. They’re going upstairs. Josh exchanges a confused look with Melanie.

“I thought he was gay,” he says, and Melanie laughs.

“Haha, no, he has this _thing_ for her, I guess they’re really gonna do it now, even though I told him to stay away. I hope she doesn’t have any STDs or anything. Poor Tyler.”

No matter how hard he tries, Josh can’t imagine someone like Tyler having sex with anyone. He shrugs off the feeling and forgets about the younger boy as Brendon comes up behind him and slaps his ass.

“ _Brendon fucking Urie – I swear – ”_

Brendon laughs and joins them in their dance. Melanie is still confused about why Tyler is going upstairs with _Jenna_ of all people – a complete stranger – but soon she too forgets about his absence.

\----

Jenna is laughing as she pulls him up the stairs, and somehow they end up in the room with the skylight – _Josh’s room,_ Tyler thinks, too drunk to care. He has no reservations against her as she pulls off the hoodie he’s wearing, after all, they’re the same – same scars, same bodies – and he takes off his shirt for her, no longer ashamed of his skin and his scars. Her tank top is gone next, and he gathers his wits and puts his hands on her hips, backing her into the wall. Their foreheads are touching.

“I like this,” he says. He’s never seen a girl so _naked_ before. She moans in response and tilts her head up until their mouths collide again, the kiss hungry and passionate. The song on the speakers changes, and Tyler can hear it through the closed door.

_Stop… with your feet in the air and your head on the ground…_

Her shorts are off next, and he kicks off his skinny jeans. They’re only separated by underwear now.

 

Her hands on him, his hands on her – they’re _really_ in to it. Tyler can barely hear the music any more. He doesn’t want to anymore. He just wants to focus on _Jenna,_ Jenna on the bed staring into the night sky with a bittersweet expression on her face, god, she’s so beautiful.

_Where is my mind?_

_Where is my mind?_

Tyler is here and he never wants to leave. Tyler is here with Jenna who never commented on his scars and Jenna is here helping him in his confused, drunk, virgin self. Jenna doesn’t mind how inexperienced he is. Jenna is smiling at him and kissing him.

_Way out in the water, see it swimmin’. I was swimmin’ in the Caribbean…_

Goosebumps rise all over Tyler’s body when Jenna digs her fingernails into his back and moans loudly.

_Where is my mind?_

He’s here, he’s here in this moment and he never wants to leave.

_Where is my mind?_

_Where is my mind?_

_Way out in the water, see it swimmin’…_

\----

Afterwards, they lay together on the bed, sweaty and exhausted. Jenna is wearing Tyler’s shirt and Tyler managed to put his boxers back on. Jenna is cradling his bandaged arm against her chest and staring into the Milky Way and the moonless sky.

Tyler is waiting for a feeling of regret to come creeping up on him and take over his body, but it hasn’t come. He enjoyed the experience and he doesn’t think he’ll ever regret it. Jenna is _perfect,_ Jenna is _beautiful,_ Jenna doesn’t hate him because of his scars or his thin, pale chest or his lack of manly features.

_Crusing on the highway with my friends, top down, and we’re all on our way to the beach…_

Tyler feels Jenna’s other hand coming to hold his, his arm still cradled against her chest. Tyler can’t believe that he’s been missing out on this kind of relationship his entire life. A happy relationship where someone loves him for who he is.

_And everyone keeps laughing at those we are passing, and we’re sucking down that bonnie, bonnie weed…_

“Tyler?” she says, not taking her eyes off the sky.

“Hmmm?”

“That was great,” she murmurs.

_And we’re rolling up to the sand, take your shoes off, man._

He brings their intertwined hands up to his lips and he kisses her hand.

_We are skinny dipping underneath the sea. And it’s a chicken fight, throw your dukes up, we are splashing in the water to the beat._

“Yeah,” he replies softly and she rolls over to hug him, her head against his chest as his heart beats quickly underneath it.

_Clumsy, sandy dunes, hot day, mid-June. Naked kids, running wild, and free._

“I like this,” she says, and they stay there.

**I realized i ruined both of these songs with some extremely cringey sex scene i wrote when i was 13 but oh well…. im too lazy to rewrite it…**


	25. ITS BEEN WAY TOO LONG AHHHH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ok so yeah uh y e a h

 

**I've started going to a therapist! two actually, but one isn't permanent. one for my depression/anxiety, one for my family problems. I'm going to a doctor soon to get tested to see if my depression is caused by genetics and if I'll get medication (it does run in my dad's side...) My life has been SOoOOoOOoO busy lately geez i have like 3 therapist appointments a week rn**

**I've been eating a lot of food lately, which makes me feel gross, but at least it's Healthy(TM)... ALSO i learned that my insurance covers top surgery so my mom said i can do that when i"m 16 if i still want to ... AND if i'm responsible then she'll let me get snakebites over the summer..; so my life's improving a lil !!!!!**

* * *

 

Tyler wakes up with a pounding headache. Jenna is sleeping beside him on the bed and the sun is shining above them. Tyler doesn’t want to move, but he knows that _he just had sex in Josh’s room_ and he should probably, at least, take off the sheets or _something_ because it just feels _wrong._

“Jenna,” he whispers, shaking at her a little. “Jenna, can you get up? I’m sorry. I have to get these sheets off.”

She rolls over off her face and groans. “Ugh, I don’t want to get up.”

“I don’t want to either,” says Tyler, so he just lays back down and waits. He wonders what’s going on downstairs. Is the house completely trashed with people passed out everywhere, or are his friends hard at work cleaning up? He feels _immensely_ guilty but at the same time he feels like he _deserved_ this, he deserves Jenna because he’s spent his entire life feeling like nobody loves him. And now, she’s _showed_ him that she loves him.

They stay like that until Tyler can’t take it anymore, he doesn’t want to lie here doing nothing any longer. “Yeah, I guess we should get up,” Jenna agrees, sitting up and tying her hair up again.

“Want to do something today?” Tyler asks hopefully, turning to look into her beautiful blue eyes. She looks confused for a second, but then smiles.

“Sure. Um, do you know where there’s a bathroom here?”

Tyler gives her the directions and gets to work taking the sheets off of Josh’s bed because he really does feel weirded out by the fact that he just had sex on his semi-friend’s bed with a girl he was repeatedly warned to _not_ have sex with. _Oh well._

He carries them to the bathroom that he remembers has a laundry chute and they’re gone, just like that. He goes back to Josh’s room and pulls on a hoodie and a pair of pants, and tentatively heads down the stairs back to the kitchen. There’s a kid from his math class passed out on the stairs, and the house beneath him is a total mess. _Oh, god._

“Oh – _Tyler – ”_ Melanie appears from in the kitchen and frowns at him. “I saw you last night. Going upstairs. You didn’t – _really – ”_

Tyler feels uncomfortable under her incredulous stare, but refuses to let it get to him. “Yeah, I _did.”_ His voice is stubborn, angry, and he can’t understand why Melanie ever wanted to keep him away from Jenna. Beautiful, perfect Jenna.

“Oh, god, Tyler, you had sex with _Jenna Black,_ I swear _, I told you_ – ”

“Told him what?” Jenna asks, and Tyler whips around, seeing Jenna clutching at a half-empty beer bottle, about to take a swig from a _completely random,_ open bottle of beer. Jeez. She steps over a passed-out classmate. “What are you talking about?”

Melanie is visibly uncomfortable. “Um…”

“Are you spreading shit about my name, Martinez?” Jenna completely passes Tyler and walks right up to Melanie, standing mere inches away from the other girl. Her voice is mocking when she speaks: “Oh, poor Jenna Black, she’s so fucked up that no one will ever love her. Have to keep the boys away from her. She’s no good.”

“No – that’s not what I meant – ”

“Well then, what the fuck did you mean? What did you tell Tyler about me?”

“Hey, what’s going on in here?” A groggy voice, male this time. Tyler turns around again to see _Josh,_ his red hair mussed and clothes wrinkled. He’s rubbing at his eyes. “God, keep it _down._ ”

“Josh, don’t get involved in this,” Melanie says through gritted teeth, staring down at Jenna.

“Yeah, don’t let him get involved, I might give him an STD by accident or something. Keep him away from me.”

“Wait, Jenna – ” Melanie starts again.

“Everyone, stop,” Tyler says desperately. “Jenna, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, the park or something, let’s just get out of here. Away from them.”

She rolls her eyes but agrees. “Some friends you have,” she tells him once they’re outside. There’s another person passed out on the lawn, and Tyler thinks that they should probably do something about that before the neighbors notice, but he doesn’t say anything.

They end up at the park, and Tyler holds her hand the whole way there. Something’s vaguely off about her, but Tyler doesn’t want to ask her, knowing that she’s probably angry about Melanie. He feels guilty that he let Melanie try and change his mind about her.

As soon as they reach a bench at the foot of the bell tower – Tyler feels a lump forming in his throat at the sight of the tower – she lets go of his hand and remains standing, even when he sits down.

“Look,” she says.

_Oh, fuck._

“That was party sex,” she informs him, her face softening when he looks confused. “Look, man. Party sex means that you’re drunk and you forget about it the next day. Party sex doesn’t mean anything, Tyler. Party sex means you hook up with someone for one night.”

 _Wait, what?_ Fuck, what’s she _saying?_ No – she couldn’t mean –

Tyler feels like crying. “So – like – ”

“Yeah, Tyler. We’re not together.”

“But we had _sex,”_ he insists. “What the fuck else would we be?”

He gave his _virginity_ to her! _Why is she doing this?_

“Look, I just wanted to hook up with someone for a few days, no strings attached. I thought you’d get it. I didn’t know you’d be so _clingy._ I thought that was a girl thing.”

“Jenna, we had _sex,_ ” is the only argument he has.

“Exactly!” She throws her hands in the air. “We had sex, that’s literally it! I didn’t think that you’d be so annoying afterwards! I’m not your girlfriend, Tyler.”

Tears are forming in his eyes when she groans, frustrated. “I’m leaving. This thing – whatever you seem to think it is – never happened and it’s done, okay?”

Tyler’s silent as she walks away and he watches her retreating back until she’s gone. The tears are no longer confined to his eyes, they are flowing freely down his face. Oh god, he was so _happy_ last night, he felt like nothing could _ever_ go wrong between them. He gave her his virginity and she wants nothing to do with him.

He can’t bring himself to stand up for what seems like an eternity. He looks up at the bell tower and remembers what happened on Monday. If he’s lucky, his razor blade might still be up there, no one knows where he is – he might be able to –

 _No,_ because Melanie told him to stay away from Jenna, and Melanie told him to stay alive for her – Melanie is right about everything, he can’t let some stupid girl’s rejection get in the way of his life. Sure, he’ll still hate himself for it, but he can’t be a little baby and just kill himself over every little thing. He forces himself to walk back in the direction of Josh’s house, each step feeling like a marathon.

He’s greeted by a kitchen full of boys in a zombie-like state, Brendon is passed out on the countertop and Pete and Patrick aren’t even sitting on each others’ lap. Josh is the only one who looks alive, and he gives Tyler a small wave when he comes through the door. He looks slightly confused.

“Jenna Black, huh? You’re back soon.”

Tyler brushes past him without even saying a word. He wishes he had his phone so he could text Melanie, seeing as she’s nowhere in sight. Instead, he settles for taking a shower.

* * *

 

**Frank iero is so adorable fite me**

 


	26. sorry it's been a while

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's spring break now so im trying to get my shit together with this story because i really do adore it! and i finally got my tapers, my ears are 14g now.... i have tapers up to 0g!! so pumped!!! ilove pain

**october 13, part i - BIG S/H TW**

* * *

 

The next day is a Sunday, so naturally, Josh and his friends are in an inseparable group and are ready to drag Tyler out of bed and to some movie theatre, but Tyler is unwilling to move from the soft mattress in Josh’s guest room. Even though he resolved not to hurl himself off of a hundred-foot tower yesterday, he is still sad, and he doesn’t want anyone to see the circular tear stains on the pillow, or how his hands are shaking from not eating, or how much he wants to go to the razor blades in his backpack.

 _A few little cuts wouldn’t hurt, Tyler,_ the voice says as soon as Tyler convinces everyone else to leave without him. He groans and tries to ignore it as he burrows deeper into the sheets, but he’s too aware of how close the backpack is to him, how easily accessible the little box of blades is.

 _I can’t cut my arms, they’ll notice, Melanie will notice and she’ll be worried,_ he argues, but the idea is becoming more and more appealing by the minute. Control… control, and the exhilarating pretty pain that comes from tearing his skin and watching the blood bead up from inside of him.

_See, see? You could benefit from this… cutting would relieve some stress, make you feel worthwhile… you’re a little worthless piece of shit after all, your parents made that apparent yesterday. And Jenna just confirmed it when she abandoned you._

_But my arms,_ Tyler thinks, not really having an argument any more.

 _Your legs,_ the voice says simply. _Nobody wants to have sex with you anyways. Nobody’s going to see your legs any more._

 _Shit, you’re right,_ Tyler thinks sarcastically, but he really has no choice but to give in. The voice is still angry in his ears but it quiets down when he drags himself over to his backpack.

_See, Tyler. You’re in control. You’re a little useful. At least you’ll destroy yourself so no one else has to. Not that they don’t want to._

Destroying himself….

_One for not getting through with it when you tried._

_One for letting Josh care about you._

_One for talking to Melanie._

_One for kissing Jenna._

_One for not following their advice._

_One for drinking that much._

_One for the sex._

_One for letting her leave._

_One for…_

Tyler’s mind is rattling off little reasons until he can’t take it anymore. He wipes the blade off on the black sweats he was wearing, chucking the razor onto the nightstand and the pants on the floor, collapsing on the bed and not even caring if the sheets become bloody underneath him. He can feel the now-cold trickle of blood slowly sliding down his thighs, which makes him itchy, but he ignores his twitching hands and stares at the ceiling.

It’s noontime…

In his peripheral vision, the tops of his thighs are a sea of crimson. When he focuses on them, he can see the long, angry red lines running across the skin there. That sick, angry feeling that always follows his self-destructive actions is creeping in. _Why did I do this? Why? What have I done?_

He yanks the pillow out from under his head and tugs it over his head so he can’t see any more.

He doesn’t want to see anymore. He let the voice win and now he feels disgusting. He hates himself because he doesn’t even have one ounce of self-control.

He wants his phone. He wants to text Melanie and tell her about how he’s feeling inside – fucked up and completely alone, unable to move and beyond caring about _anything._ He feels so broken and useless.

 _She probably doesn’t care about me anyways,_ he thinks hollowly, and he lets himself fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

Josh is the only one who comes back to his house that night, a bag of Taco Bell for Tyler in one hand and his keys in the other. He had to drop Brendon off at some church thing after the handful of movies they watched at the threatre, but he went for dinner with the rest of his friends before coming back. Mel’s got some family reunion thing happening, and Pete is having a special date night with Patrick that Josh definitely doesn’t want to interrupt. So he’s alone again.

“Tyler?” He calls hesitantly into the house when the door opens. He expects Tyler to at least be in the kitchen, raiding the fridge, or maybe hanging back behind the living room doorway to see who’s coming in. But the house is completely empty, as it has been for the majority of the last four months.

Uncertainty washes over him. His neck prickles in fear. He drops the food and the keys on the counter and his hat on the couch when he passes it, going to the room where he last saw Tyler – crying and curled up on the king-size mattress. _Shit, I knew it was a bad idea to leave him here… shit… shit…_

Josh stops in front of the door and blinks away the images flashing behind his eyes – Tyler running through the rain, Tyler at the top of the tower, Tyler’s blood covering everything in the bathroom and the way that he clung to Josh after his panic attack.

_No… he’s probably just asleep or something…_

“Tyler?” He knocks on the partially shut door. The mattress creaks and he hears movement from within the room. At least Tyler isn’t dead. “Hey, can I come in?”

The door swings open under the pressure from his fist before Tyler answers, and Josh prepares himself to run in case Tyler’s naked or something, but all he sees is Tyler sitting on the bed, his back pressed into the headboard and the covers drawn up around his knees. He looks terrified.

“Tyler?”

“Go away,” Tyler says immediately.

“No, I’m done with that. Tyler, I genuinely care about you and I want to talk to you.”

“No… you don’t. _You’re just like the others._ You’re just like Jenna. You leave me…”

“Dude, if this is about the movie, I asked you before we’re left,” Josh says, frustrated, and Tyler shakes his head quickly.

“It’s not like that, I just… I don’t know… I just don’t want anyone else to leave me.”

“Melanie hasn’t left you, she’ll be back here tomorrow,” Josh supplies, and he tentatively makes his way over to Tyler. “She’d never leave you. You’ve never heard her talking about you, have you?”

Tyler shakes his head, still cowering under the blanket as Josh sits on the edge of the bed. “She _adores_ you, Tyler. She doesn’t ever stop talking about you. If you think she’d abandon you because of the Jenna thing, you’re wrong.”

Tyler flinches at the mention of Jenna. “Can we… c-can we not talk about Jenna?” His voice starts to shake as he speaks and he curses himself. Josh is barely a foot away from him and he’s so scared, he feels like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. If Josh demands for him to get up right now, he’ll see the dried blood on Tyler’s legs. If Josh just turns his head three inches to the right, he’ll see the hastily wiped-off blade on the nightstand.

Tyler knows that deep down, cutting makes him weak. It lets his problems win. If Josh sees that he’s still cutting, he’ll hate Tyler even more. _Weak, useless, stupid._

“It’s okay, Tyler. Whatever happened between you… I don’t really care, okay? I don’t think of you any differently. I won’t make you talk about her.”

_He wouldn’t be so nice if he could see me…_

“O…okay…” His hands twist around the blanket. It huts to press his thighs into his body like this, but he’s afraid that Josh is going to lunge forwards and tear at his only layer of protection to reveal him. He probably knows that Tyler’s hiding something.

“Are you okay? I have food. It’s in the kitchen. I’ll go get it,” Josh offers, backing away when he sees how uncomfortable Tyler is. Tyler nods quickly. This is his chance.

Luckily, there isn’t so much blood on the sheets, and if he has to, he’ll just lie and say he had a nosebleed or something. The positioning and the amount of blood is not improbable. He goes to the bathroom and uses a wad of toilet paper to scrape away the now-dried blood from his legs, wincing as he touches the wounds.

When he wanders out to the kitchen, Josh is sticking a Taco Bell burrito into the microwave. Tyler walks quietly to stand beside him. He remembers how last time when he felt so empty, Melanie made him a cup of tea… green tea, he remembers. It made him feel warm inside. Full. Happier.

“Do you have any tea?”

Josh shuts the microwave and turns around as it buzzes to life. He’s barely an inch away from Tyler, who stumbles backwards, his back hitting the island. Josh blinks. “Uhh, yeah. I think it’s in this cabinet…” he moves away quickly, going to retrieve the box of tea from the cabinet. Tyler takes a mug off the dish rack and fills it with water, waiting for the burrito to finish microwaving.

* * *

 

**hi ily guys and i hope u never feel like you have to cut yourself :(  i havent cut at all this year and its so satisfying but still a struggle. pleeeaaaseee don't hurt yourself, you deserve so much better <3 **


	27. i think i have the flu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> smh i've lost my voice too and i'm supposed to be going for anOthER eval today ........ hmmmm.. anD get my blood drawn? imma die 
> 
> sorry this is short, i actually think it was supposed to b epart of the last chapter hmmmM

Josh appears with the teabag between his fingers, and Tyler outstretches his hand. It’s hard to concentrate on anything other than _Josh,_ and Tyler thinks that the older boy’s fingers linger against his palm, possibly a little longer than they should have. Maybe he’s just imagining things.

He misses the closeness when Josh moves over to the bag of Taco Bell, and he listens to the rustling of the paper as he starts up the microwave. It’s much more complicated than the one at home – _home,_ he thinks, _home, I haven’t been home in so long. I wonder how Zach and Jay and Maddie are._

He feels tears inexplicably coming to his eyes and he leans over the kitchen sink, hearing them drip against the metal. The microwave whirs over the sound but he feels Josh’s eyes on his back. He drags the sleeve of his hoodie over his eyes and forces a calm expression onto his face before he turns around and accepts the now-warm burrito that Josh offers him.

“You know, you can talk to me,” Josh says softly, looking him in the eye carefully. His nose ring is shining under the harsh kitchen light, and Tyler feels the tears surging back again and he can’t stop them.

“I just… I miss my brothers… and Maddie… I miss them but I’m not going back to my parents. Never. I never want to see them again,” he says, voice thick with emotion again. God he’s probably so annoying, constantly crying. His ‘friends’ probably think he’s such a crybaby.

“Oh my fucking _god,”_ he says, rubbing desperately at his eyes with the sleeves of his hoodie. _He can’t breathe._ It’s like the Hoover Dam has been released behind his eyes and his throat, the tears are coming freely now, and so are the words. “I hate m-myself so m-much. I wish I was n-norm-mal. I wish I w-was _d-dead_. Josh, I want t-to d-die. It f-feels like I’m so, so _alone,_ and I _know_ that I’m not, b-but I feel s-so _hopeless,_ s-so w-worthless – ”

He’s cut off when Josh surges forward and wraps his arms around him so tight that he can’t breathe, but it’s the good kind of not-being-able-to-breathe, he feels so anchored down, like his soul won’t just fall through the floor without any warning. He lets his head fall forward into the curve of Josh’s neck and focuses on steadying his breathing. It feels so _right_ standing here in the kitchen with Josh, the smell of Taco Bell and the bright lights around them, more right and more real than anything that happened with Jenna ever was.

Josh doesn’t say anything, he just stands there with his chin balanced on top of Tyler’s head, **(yeah I made josh taller than him, fuck yeah, fight me)** and Tyler remembers the last time he felt so warm and so safe. He pushed Josh away after that. He now knows – _he can never push Josh away again,_ he’ll feel so empty and alone if does. He _wants_ Josh, he _needs_ Josh.

They stay there for exactly forty-three more heartbeats – Tyler counts them, his head is so close to Josh’s heart. He reluctantly lets go of Josh, not wanting to make the boy uncomfortable, but follows him to the sitting room as he carries the Taco Bell to the couch. He curls against Josh’s side, the mug of tea held in both of his hands. He steals Josh’s warmth and Josh steals his.

The tea makes him feel full, but it’s nothing compared to the happiness he feels next to Josh.

 

* * *

 

 

Tyler feels an inexplicable guilt as Josh insists on changing his bandages for him.

He feels ashamed and can’t bring himself to look at Josh, much less the marks on his arm, as Josh gently unwraps the coverings from around his wrists. Josh’s fingers are soft and warm; he sits next to him on the counter with his thigh against Tyler’s, the ball of gauze becoming larger on his lap as he unwraps it.

Josh doesn't need to do this, but he wants to.

“I think you can just wear a band-aid now,” he says, and he reaches behind Tyler to open the medicine cabinet and take out a box of band-aids. Tyler’s skin tingles where Josh brushes against him. The large band-aid just covers the cut. Somewhere in the house, the phone starts to ring.

“Shit. I’ll get it,” Josh says. “If you want to, just grab some clothes out of my closet.” He leaves the bathroom, tossing the wad of gauze in the trash on his way out. Tyler waits until Josh is well down the hall to hop off the counter and go to lock the door.

Peeling the old sweats away from his cuts is painful. Flakes of dried brown blood are caked over the ugly, deep slashes and he winces, grabbing a wad of wet toilet paper to try and clean them off. One of the cuts promptly reopens upon trying, and he curses, taking the box of gauze back out of the cabinet. He cranes to listen for Josh, who is now directly below him in the house.

“Hello? Oh, hey.” A few footsteps, the drawer opens, some silverware clinks. Silence.

There’s a sudden clanging sound, like somebody dropped a knife on the ground. “ _What?”_

 

* * *

 

**_my fingernails are almost nonexistent GOD HELP ME i neeed to stop biting them_ **


	28. HAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHELP ME

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IM ON THESE DEPRESSION/ANXIETY/OCD MEDS AND THEYRE FUCKING WITH ME SO BAD OH MAN I CANT EVEN THINK STRAIGHT AND MY HEAD FEELS LIKE ITS GONNA EXPLODE BUT IT ALSO FEELS LIKE IT IS SIMULTANEOUSLY FILLED WITH COTTON AND I FEEL SO EMPTY LIKE IM CONSTANTLY IN A STATE OF DISASSOCIATION SO YEAH THATS HOW MY WEEK HAS GONE OH MAN I DONT EVEN REMEMBER WHEN I LAST UPDATED THIS I CANT REMEMBER ANYTHING HELP ME

ALSO IM NOT THAT INTO PANIC FANFICTION SO I DONT KNOW THE SHIPS PLEASE JUST BE OK WITH BRALLON

 

* * *

 

 

Josh misses being so close to Tyler, but he can’t help but think that maybe the person calling the _house phone_ might be… like… his _parents…_ or his sister… or _somebody_ who’s relevant. Somebody who he wants to talk to. Not just some stupid telemarketer.

He hurries down to the phone, grabbing a jar of Nutella from the cabinet on the way. Josh loves Nutella, it’s fucking soul food.

“Hello?” He walks over to the silverware drawer, waiting for the other person to speak.

“Um… hi… Josh… it’s Melanie…” Something about her voice is oddly off.

“Oh, hey.” Josh opens the silverware drawer and searches for a spoon. He never sorts out the silverware now that his parents are gone, so they’re just sort of in a giant pile on top of the organizer.

“Josh… it’s Brendon. He – he’s in the hospital.”

“What?” The spoon falls from Josh’s hand. Panic prickles hotly down his neck. _Oh god._ “What happened to him? Is he okay?”

Melanie sniffs, and the anxious panic feeling intensifies. “T-they said… h-he’s in a c-c-coma.”

Josh nearly drops the phone. _No. No. No._ “What h-happened?”

“His parents. His parents did this to him, Josh.”

 

* * *

 

 

“There was this kid, Dallon,” Pete says in a hushed voice. They’re all sitting around Brendon, who is horribly still – Pete, Patrick, Melanie, Josh, and Tyler, who feels an incredible numbness. He doesn’t know why he can’t feel anything. He has a strangely neutral feeling about this entire situation. It’s awful. He feels like he should be feeling _something,_ remorse, sadness, _guilt,_ but it’s as though all of the emotions have been drained right out of him. “Brendon was actually dating him in secret. He didn’t tell any of us, but me.”

The group is silent as Pete continues. Josh is holding Brendon’s limp hand. Pete holds the other. Patrick is clinging to Pete, and Melanie is leaning on to him. Tyler’s the only one who isn’t connected to them. “He told me earlier. He was going to tell his parents that he was dating another boy. They knew he was bi, but they didn’t actually think he’d ever date one.” Pete takes a shuddery breath. “A few hours ago, I got a call from Dallon. He was asking where Brendon was, they were supposed to go out tonight. I drove to Brendon’s house and… his parents didn’t let me in, they said he was off doing sinful things in his room. Oh g-god, it was awful, his dad was so _evil_ looking, and he had his belt hanging off him like he was ready to beat the shit out of anybody who crossed him… and Brendon’s mom… she was like some robot. It was awful.”

Pete wipes furiously at his face and chokes back a sob. _All these crying people, yet you can’t summon any emotions for them._ Tyler ignores the voice. “I ran around back and I broke into his room. I knew something wasn’t right. Just the look in his dad’s eye, that horrible, triumphant look. Like he’d beaten something. Like he’d killed something evil.

“I b-broke the window and… and… he was just in there… he was on the bed, and he was barely breathing. He’d t-taken a whole bottle of his dad’s pain meds. That s-strong shit. He was laying there. And his d-dad _knew_ it. He _l-let_ him do it. I called the amb-bulance and they brought him here and they p-pumped his stomach but he wouldn’t w-wake up-p. So… h-here h-he is.”

Pete dissolves into incomprehensible words, and Patrick gathers him onto his lap. “Shh. Babe. Babe, he’s gonna be okay. You saved him. He’s gonna wake up and he’s gonna be alright.”

Tyler wonders if he should comfort Josh. The red-haired boy is sitting in a folding chair next to Brendon, holding the sleeping boy’s hand in both of his, his thumbs rubbing circles on Brendon’s wrist. He has an unreadable expression on his face, somewhere between anger and sadness.

“So where’s Dallon now?” Melanie’s voice holds just a sliver of malice, understandably. “Why isn’t Brendon’s _boyfriend –_ who _caused_ all of this – here?”

“I d-don’t k-know,” Pete says shakily. Patrick tightens his hold on Pete. For the first time that Tyler’s ever observed, Patrick looks mad, with his chin propped on Pete’s shoulder, like he’s going to hurt somebody. Anger is not a pretty look on Patrick’s soft features. He looks ready to kill.

“Some boyfriend,” Patrick mutters, his knuckles turning white around Pete’s waist.

“I want to get _drunk_ ,” Melanie moans. “That’s what he’d want, you know. A fuckin’ party.”

“But it would feel wrong without him there,” Patrick says.

“I second that,” Josh says loudly. “Brendon wouldn’t want us miserably sitting around while he’s is a coma. He’d want us to do shit. Smash shit up.”

“I-I have some in my t-truck,” Pete says.

 

* * *

 

 

The air is so cold that Tyler layers on two hoodies before they go to meet Pete and Patrick and Melanie in the cemetery at midnight. The location seems almost taboo, but it’s about the only place where they want to host a mini-party. A small time to mourn. Pete arrives with Patrick on his back, eyeliner smeared and a bottle of liquor in each hand where his arms are curled around Patrick’s knees. Melanie has a case of beer that she smuggled from her dad’s house. Josh has donuts. Tyler has nothing but cold, white breath and shaking hands. His knees feel frozen through the rips in his skinny jeans.

They pass through the tombstones in a small, cluttered group, led by Melanie’s phone light. “Hayley wanted to come, but she couldn’t get a ride from Ashley. Neither of ’em.” It’s obvious that she’s already tipsy from the slur in her voice.

Once in a while, the light on her phone hits the date on a marker. _2001_ , a smooth marble headstone. _1984,_ a cross with ivy growing up the side. _1959,_ an obelisk with a crack down the middle. The graves get larger as they pick their way down the trail. _1922,_ a family plot with a rotten wooden fence around the edge. A hitch catches in Tyler’s throat when they pass a crumbled slab marked _1899._ Something feels wrong. Something feels so wrong.

1876 brings them to a huge marble tomb. Its only distinguishable feature is the date. The names have long since crumbled off into the ground with the dirt and the grass. Tyler realizes that they’ve walked through a whole hundred years of dead bodies. He has a sudden morbid image of a hundred years’ worth of corpses rising from their tombs and joining them in their mourning party.

Pete boosts Patrick up onto the top of the massive tomb, where he sits, perched on the edge, his feet swinging and hitting the stone. Tyler feels like there’s something morally wrong with climbing on the headstones of people who have been dead since the Civil War, but he keeps his mouth shut. He gasps when he feels hands at his sides, biting back a swear when they touch his cuts. It’s just Josh boosting him up onto the tomb, but the bands of warmth where Josh’s fingers touched him are still tingling even when Josh lets go.

His thigh is on fire against Josh’s – or is that just the inflamed cuts? – as they huddle together on the side of the tomb. Pete opens one of the bottles and takes a swig, and it comes passing down the line, next to Patrick, then Melanie, then Josh, then Tyler. Tyler is absolutely repulsed by the taste and the burning sensation, but he forces a good amount down his throat before passing it back to Josh.

He loses track of how many times the bottle passes by him, but it’s enough to have Pete giggling and Melanie becoming increasingly more loud with every word as she scarfs down donuts. Patrick hops off of the tomb and leads Pete away and out of sight. Melanie’s phone lights up with a text and smirking, she hops away and soon it’s just Josh and Tyler and a half-empty bottle. Tyler is shivering and Josh puts an arm around him, pulling him close into his chest.

“C’mere, let me hold you, you’re shaking,” Josh says, tugging at Tyler.

 _I’m drunk, I’m drunk and last time I was drunk I did horrible things,_ Tyler thinks desperately, but somehow he thinks that Josh won’t do that thing to him. Josh is too nice to do that. Josh just wants to warm him up.

“C’mere,” Josh grunts again, and with a sudden movement, Tyler lands on his lap. Josh wraps his arms around Tyler, his chin on top of Tyler’s hair. “Hmmm…”

He hums and Tyler can feel it, breath tickling his hair. Josh’s chest vibrates against his back.  Tyler can feel himself melting into Josh’s warmth, his eyes slipping shut.

“I…wanna… go home…” Josh says some time later. “You want to walk home now?”

Tyler yawns and nods.

“I’m so sad,” Josh says quietly. “I miss Brendon already.”

“Me too,” Tyler says, but he’s not really sure which statement he’s agreeing with. Both, maybe.

**lmao they were literally there for like 10 minutes omg they suck…. PLOTHOLES**

* * *

 

I WENT ON MYCHEMICALROMANCEFANFICTION LAST NIGHT AND IT WAS SO CRINGEY LIKE WOW A03 HAS THE HIGH-END SHIT 


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> please read the note at the end lmfao

They’re about halfway there before they run into trouble. The cold air sobers Josh quickly now that he’s away from Tyler’s warmth. He is pulling his hood up and trying to remember how to get home when he sees the headlights reflecting on the road in front of him.

He hears a window roll down. “Hey, faggots!” A bottle smashes just inches away from where Tyler’s foot touches the ground next. He gives a startled gasp and jumps back, further onto the sidewalk.

“Josh - !”

The truck comes to a stop and the door opens. A sweatshirt-clad jock hops out and grins.

“Lookit the coupla’ faggots we got here,” he slurs, swinging a beer bottle in his hand. “Y’know, faggots ain’t supposed to be in… in public. My dad says that. He says… he says… that they should be… locked up.”

By now, two other boys have emerged from the truck. Tyler lets Josh push him behind him. He nervously touches Josh’s arm – it’s three, maybe four, maybe more – against two. Not a fair fight, not even a good fight because they have no reason to start one.

“Why are you out here then?” the second boy asks, also obviously drunk. Shit.

“We should… teach ‘em… teach ‘em a lesson…” The first boy pipes up again. The third nods, staying silent yet intimidating, with muscled arms crossed on his chest.

“We should run,” Tyler says quietly. Josh nods his head, looking more scared than Tyler would like to see. “There’s no other way we’ll beat them.”

“On three,” Josh hisses, but he doesn’t actually count to three, he watches the threatening jocks start to cross the road and he puts his hand against Tyler’s. His fingers count up silently. _One. Two. Three._

Tyler darts off like an Olympic racer, albeit wobbly. He looks behind him – Josh’s moving a lot more slowly. The guys across the road are yelling and now they’re running too.

 _Shit… shit…_ he’s frozen in place as he watches the first boy make a lunge for Josh, capturing Josh’s arm and causing him to stumble and fall onto the rough sidewalk. Tyler stops dead.

“TYLER!”

“That’s right, call for your boyfriend,” the intimidating one growls, a predatory grin apparent on his face. Tyler looks around desperately for a weapon, knowing he’ll never beat them without one. They’re surrounding Josh…

“Run!” He ignores Josh’s frantic, slurred voice.

 _There._ A fallen section from the creaky old metal fence around the perimeter of the cemetery. It’s a few feet long and deadly sharp on the end, like a fire poker. Tyler grabs it and runs towards Josh as fast as he can.

“Oh, shit!” The second boy skitters away nervously, and the third one drops Josh’s arm quickly.

“Fuck!” Tyler smirks at his frightened voice, but as soon as they’re all back in the truck he drops it and rushes to Josh, who has hefted himself back into a sitting position.

“Oh… fuck… my knees…” _Fucking hell…_ Josh’s knees are scraped and bloody from the fall on the sidewalk, along with a spectacularly bloody gash going up his forearm. Tyler offers him a hand up and allows Josh to sway against him briefly. “Fucking hell. Shit. Those fucking _bastards…_ ”

“Do you think they go to our school?” Tyler asks anxiously, thinking of the repercussions they might face when they go to school tomorrow.

“Pretty sure that _douchebag_ is in my math class,” Josh mutters, gritting his teeth as they starting walking again. He bends over to pick a piece of gravel out of his knee. It fucking hurts.

“Wait, which one?” Tyler asks. Josh laughs weakly and turns his face up to the sky. The stars are hanging down over them like a blanket. So beautiful. Like the cemetery, the old architecture around them. _Like Tyler._ He turns and catches Tyler’s eye for a brief moment. The brown-haired boy quickly looks at the ground beneath his feet, hiding the blush from Josh.

His body is still humming in fear and adrenaline from earlier. He feels something brush against his arm and moves his eyes over to Josh, who’s now staring straight ahead with a ghost of a smile on his face. _Josh’s hand._

Tyler moves his hand to Josh’s and laces their fingers together. They walk the rest of the way back to Josh’s house hand in hand.

* * *

**someone!!!! i've watched my way through all the ed movies there are in existence - starving in suburbia, to the bone, even fucking sharing the secret. now i want to watch movies from the early 2000s with emos in them. please. somebody tell me the titles of movies with emos in them from the 2000s**


	30. i think i have the flu agAIN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hi yes sorry school ended two weeks ago but my life has been overtaken by compulsive exercise and staying asleep as long as possible to avoid consuming food so yeah its shit 
> 
> ily guys also this is like the last pre written chapter i have (i think) so yeah im actually gonna have to WRITE and im working on the kellic one i have but mostly because its the most recent thing ive done

**sorry guys i didnt read this before posting it and considering the fact that i wrote it over 8 months ago i have no idea what happens so yeah**

Josh checks his phone when they get back inside. Part of him is just hoping that Brendon’s name will appear on the screen. _Haha, gotcha, see you at school tomorrow._ But nobody’s name is on the notification screen, and he sighs, putting it down on the counter. Like always, he’s _hungry._ He pulls a bag of chips out of the cabinet.

He feels so sober. He wonders what kind of cheap shit that stuff that Pete brought was. He doesn’t want to feel sober at all. He wants to forget about Tyler… Tyler on his lap, his chin in Tyler’s hair, Tyler shaking against him. Tyler looking terrified and wielding a rusted metal fence section at a couple of douchebags.

The chip bag pops in his hand and he doesn’t even realize that he was holding it so tightly. He glances down at it, the chips crushed under his fingers, and curses under his breath. He really needs to piss.

His leg stings as he limps down the hall.

 

* * *

 

Tyler feels like a monster. An evil shell of himself that barely exists. It’s like the edges of his body flicker when he sees them in his peripheral vision, and maybe if he were to look in the mirror, he’d see that blurryfaced being’s red eyes and his blackened skin had replaced his own.

He’d locked himself inside of the bathroom as soon as they got home, unsure of what to do. He felt so flat, two-dimensional, unrealistic, like someone had drawn him on a paper. He’s been sitting on the counter for a good ten minutes and wondering why he can’t make himself feel anything. As soon as he stepped in the threshold of Josh’s house, an eerie calm settled over his body. The calm before a storm.

 _The calm before a storm._ But the probability of there being a storm is not there. His world is glossy and flat like a Polaroid picture. Josh’s towel is not there. The laundry hamper is not there. The medicine cabinet is not there. Gone, gone, gone. An illusion. They’re all an illusion, showing him what he wants to see.

An illusion. What _he_ wants to see, not those boys at the road earlier, who didn’t want to see him. Tyler looks down at his wrists and sees thick white scars, raised even worse than normal in the cold. And below that are those scabbed-over red lines, fading down into the color of his skin. Does this mean he wants to see his scars? His scars are part of what he is, he supposes, but he hates them. Maybe this is not an illusion after all.

It's like that day he tried to… to kill himself. In this very bathroom, the world was a blur and so was his mind. He refused to realize that everything was happening. He wonders why he can’t feel anything.

 _Look in the mirror,_ he hears. And he looks around but no-one is there.

“Blurryface?” he asks. After all, that is what the creature should be called. A figment of his own mind. A blurry projection of his own likeness. Blurryface is appropriate for this.

_I’m back._

“You were never gone.” Tyler says, and with a harsh movement, he snaps his gaze over to the medicine cabinet mirror. His face is normal and that is what scares him. “Where are you hiding?”

He thinks maybe he is drunk.

_I’m not hiding anywhere, Tyler. I’ve been here the whole time. Inside of you._

Brendon may have taken this as an opportunity to crack a sexual joke, but Brendon isn’t here now. Tyler stares in the mirror and looks for a sign, a trace of the blurryfaced boy. The hairs on his neck raise and he turns his head to look behind him. Nothing, no one.

“Where… where are you?”

_I already told you… I’m inside of you. I’m part of you, Tyler._

“No… you’re not…” But he feels a horrible cold feeling, like someone poured water over him. He looks in the mirror again. The freezing counter is seeping through his pants and onto his thighs… his vision is getting blurry…

_Hello there…_

He sees _Blurryface_ in complete clarity.

_Do you feel me?_

“No, no, I don’t feel anything,” Tyler mutters, frantically looking around him to find a trace of the projection. _None._ He looks back in the mirror and his heart plummets. Blurryface is standing right next to him, a sly grin on his face. His features match Tyler’s exactly, but his neck is blackened as though burnt and so are his awful, twisted hands. His eyes are the worst of all, red and probing, like he can look right into Tyler’s soul.

Tyler shivers at the sight of those eyes. “Get out, get out, get out,” he whispers frantically, trying to hit Blurry, but his hands hit air and nothing else. He chokes back a sob.

_You know how, Tyler. Exorcism is so easy._

Tyler thinks back to history, the Salem witch trials and those guys who accused everyone of being the devil. _Exorcism…_ demons. It meant to extract _demons._ Blurryface is his demon. Blurryface is _his_ and no one else knows that. No one else knows what he’s going through. No one will ever know when Blurryface is finally defeated.

 _Help me,_ he thinks, and those thoughts are his own – at least, he believes they’re his own. He can’t tell. Blurryface is whispering into his brain and he can’t think anymore.

_Help me…_

_It would be so easy to help yourself_ , Blurry says.

“Nooo…” The moan that comes out of his throat is low and guttural. He doesn't _want_ to. _No, no, no._ Not for a _second_ time today. He already did it today and he’s _not_ going to _fucking_ do it again, goddammit.

_But don’t you remember how good it felt? The rip of the blade… pretty little blood beading out of your bleeding body…_

There’s a harsh rap on the door and Tyler snaps out of it, the evil projection disappearing from behind him. He blinks and stares at his hands – normal, pale, not ringed in black like those that were in the mirror moments ago. “Tyler? You in there?”

“Y…yeah…” Tyler quickly hits the handle on the toilet even though he didn’t use it and turns on the sink, cursing the way his voice broke when Josh called for him. He’s washing away those bad thoughts. He’s washing away everything bad because _Josh_ is here, and Josh makes everything better. He quickly wipes off his eyes where the tears were forming and flashes a weak smile at the mirror.

_Im okay. Im okay. Im okay and I’m going to ask Josh if I can stay with him again because oh god I cant be alone anymore and neither can he. we need each other_

(The smile slips from his face for a split second but he quickly replaces the façade)

“Tyler?”

Tyler shuts off the sink and slowly opens the door, wondering if he’s genuinely crazy or just drunk.


	31. lol my whole plot for this story is falling apart but i'm trying for y'all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HOLY NACHOS THE HIATUS IS OVER AM I DREAMING?!?!?

**in celebration of the end of the world's least favorite hiatus (save for mindless self indulgence, a wonderful band thats been on hiatus for FOUR FUCKING YEARS... try that, clique members.)**

* * *

 

After a midnight snack of crushed chips and a shared lemon San Pellegrino that Josh found in the back of the fridge, Tyler goes to root in Josh’s closet for some more sweats and Josh goes to take a shower. It’s strange; Josh’s clothes are always nicely washed and folded and hung, yet Tyler has never actually observed Josh doing laundry. He dismisses the thought and chooses an oversize pair of black Jack Skellington sweatpants.

Apparently, Josh doesn’t do _enough_ laundry, because there’s nothing with long sleeves left. _At all._ Tyler nervously wonders where the laundry chute in Josh’s room leads to – downstairs obviously, but he’s _never_ seen a staircase leading to a basement. He wonders if it’s too late to go and use, hm, a stick or something to fish out the hoodie he just ever-so-carelessly tossed in there.

 _A stick? Get it together Joseph…_ Groaning in frustration, he doesn’t find so much as a sweatshirt, so he settles on wrapping a blanket around his shoulders like a cape. He feels fucking stupid parading around like that, but at least Josh doesn’t have to look at his arms now.

 _Josh…_ Josh comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later and Tyler goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth, pointedly ignoring the mirror.

\---

“Josh?”

The red-headed boy glances down from where he’s stretched out on his bed, lazily staring up at the skylight in the ceiling. The blankets are piled high because of the chilly air.

“Hmm?”

“Can I…” Tyler looks down, blushing a little. He fiddles with the end of the blanket wrapped around his body and studies the floorboards beneath his sock feet. “Um. Can I say with you again? Tonight, I mean.”

If Josh is shocked, he hides it well. “Uh. Sure.”

Tyler drags the blanket with him and crawls under the blankets next to Josh. It’s pleasantly warm under the covers, and even though Tyler keeps his distance, the proximity between them is still comfortable.

“Are you okay?” Josh asks through the dark, and Tyler jumps because something is touching his arm but it’s really just Josh’s hand. He returns the touch, hesitantly moving to lace their fingers together.

“I’m… I’m okay…” He doesn’t even know if he’s lying anymore. He thinks about Blurryface and how his hands looked blackened and burnt in the mirror. “Are you?”

Josh is quiet. “I think so.” Then he sighs. “I hope Brendon is.” He, almost absently, starts moving his thumb in gentle movements on the back of Tyler’s hand, his fingers warm against the roof of Tyler’s palm, and Tyler feels little shivers running down his spine. Josh carefully disentangles their hands but keeps the contact, gently running his fingers up Tyler’s arm. “Please don’t ever do that to me again, Tyler.”

Josh feels selfish asking, knowing Tyler can’t control his emotions like that. But he wants to be selfish. He doesn’t want Tyler to ever leave him again.

“I can’t promise you that…” Tyler says quietly and he feels Josh’s fingers against the raised scabs on his arm.

“Promise you’ll try not to.”

Tyler’s heart stutters. _I can’t I can’t I can’t, don’t make me, please._

“I _can’t,_ ” he says and his heart is hammering and his breath is catching in his throat and his voice gets thick, cracking right at the end.

(Josh’s hand against his waist) _Oh god…_

“Shh… shhhh… it’s okay. You’re okay. I promise you’re gonna be okay.”

Warm fingertips curling around his hips. **(this was in my a/ns from when i wrote this last year? just the sentence:  lemme see that MAN PELVIS ??? i d k) **A cold nose touches against the back of his neck and he gasps.

“It’s okay, Tyler. I’m here for you.”

Josh’s warm breath roots him to the spot, frozen. But he believes what Josh is saying. He feels his body relaxing back into Josh’s, melding against the arm around his waist. The tears are drying off his face.

“Thank… thank you,” he whispers.

“It’s what a friend should do,” Josh says, and the word _friend_ stings Tyler in the face, like a slap. _Friend?_ Isn’t he more than just a friend? It feels like it.

Just-friends don’t hug each other in bed. Just-friends don’t sit in each other’s laps, unless you’re Brendon-fucking-Urie, and Brendon is in a _coma,_ and normal, just-friends don’t get mistaken for boyfriends. Just-friends don’t share clothes and live together.

He rolls out of Josh’s grip and pulls his own blanket tighter around him, staring up at the dark sky above him.

He’ll accept Josh’s presence. But until Josh says so, they’re just friends and nothing more.

****

* * *

 

**I'm so happy right now??? The hiatus is over??? Josh watered his lane even mORE??? I got my tongue pierced???? (Yes, my irresponsible parents allowed their equally irresponsible 14 year old child to get a tongue piercing??) They released music???? I'm going on a vacation to a SCHMANCY beach resort next week??? I'm a shaky mess and I secretly haven't taken my meds in two weeks but i feel FINE!?!?!? (haha do not attempt!) also i bleached my undercut and dyed it blue so now i have fuzzy blue shit on my head!!!!**

 

**why am i HAPPY?! wha'tsmt is this SHIT?!?!?**


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